Car chase ensues after officer bitten, punched

Two people have been charged after an off-duty RCMP officer was punched and bitten while trying to stop a shoplifter at a Wetaskiwin grocery store.

The off-duty RCMP officer was attempting to arrest a woman for shoplifting at a Wetaskiwin Safeway on Monday when a second woman attacked him, biting and punching him, before the pair fled in a minivan with a male passenger, said police in a Wednesday news release.

Mounties eventually caught up to a vehicle, which had been stolen in Calgary, in a rural part of the county near Range Road 250 and Township Road 460. Officers pursued it onto Highway 2A before the chase was called off for safety reasons after the driver turned into a residential area in Ermineskin First Nation.

Police later caught up to the vehicle at the Ermineskin town site but the driver fled before crashing into two police vehicles.

The woman who was driving the van and her male passenger were arrested.

Janelle Bear, 29, of Edmonton, is charged with assaulting a police officer with a weapon causing bodily harm, fleeing police, dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, theft under $5,000 and possession of stolen property.

Vince Rain, 33, of Maskwacis, was charged with a string of offences including theft under $5,000, resisting a peace officer, possession of property obtained by crime and impaired driving.

Both are to appear in Wetaskiwin court on June 28.

Mounties continue to look for the second woman.