What started as a report of a man on the highway Sunday escalated to a police pursuit through some West Vancouver backyards and ended in a suspect being sent to Prince George to face sex assault charges.
West Vancouver police first responded to a report of a shirtless man darting in and out of traffic on Highway 1 near Cypress Bowl Road just before 4:30 p.m. Police arrived and the suspect fled down the highway, through a break in a fence and down into the residential area below.
"Someone not wearing a shirt and running very fast through a residential area obviously generates a lot of attention and a lot of calls," said Const. Jeff Palmer, West Vancouver police spokesman.
"We got him cornered into a yard (on Rosebery Avenue) with quite a heavy thicket of blackberries that he couldn't go through and his only path back was to officers waiting. We did have a police dog attend and really the presence of the police dog, I think, helped his decision that it was best to surrender without incident," Palmer said.
The man was initially arrested under the Mental Health Act, which gives police the power to detain people who appear to be in a state of mental disorder and are posing a risk to themselves or others.
It was only after they ran his name through the police record system, they learned there was an arrest warrant out for him from a sex assault investigation in Prince George.
