A robbery’s one thing, but bear spray isn’t cool, and it “sucks” that someone would bear spray someone. That’s what Red Shred’s Bike and Board Shed owner Mark Savard was saying the day after someone entered his Williams Lake store, let off some bear spray, and stole a longboard worth around $300.
“Reflecting back, that’s the bad thing. It still smells like it in here and you have to cough,” Savard told the Tribune Friday morning. “I’m sure everyone knows what it would be like to be bear sprayed and yet that someone would still bear spray someone is crazy.”
Now the store has bikes and everything coated in bear spray. “No thought and no respect,” Savard said.
Earlier in the day a group of kids came in and scoped the store, but it was only one youth that returned. “He barely came in the door. He ran in the doorway, sprayed, grabbed a longboard and ran.”
Savard acted quickly. He jumped on his bike, and chased the thief down, who was running away on foot carrying the stolen longboard. “I took off and did a lap around the Elk’s Hall. He ran up the alley behind the Bank of Montreal behind Barton’s Insurance. I chased him down in front of Barton’s in the middle of Oliver Street and took him down in the Shopper’s parking lot.”
The thief didn’t have an escape route planned, Savard suggested. “I think there was a lot of fear. I was running behind him and it was like cornering a chicken, he didn’t know what to do,” Savard recalled. “He kept on pointing the bear spray at me and spraying me, but I said go ahead, it’s the last thing you’ll ever do, put it down now while you can.”
Williams Lake RCMP were dispatched to Red Shred’s and then caught up to where Savard was holding the suspect in the parking lot at Shopper’s. The suspect was taken into custody by police and later released on a promise to appear for a court date in the future.
“The suspect was in the company of two of his friends at the time of the robbery. All are youth in their mid- teens. The investigation is continuing to further identify each person’s role,” the RCMP said in a press release.
From the Williams Lake Tribune