Retired cop flies to defence of singer who was attacked

“There’s a fight,” she hollered at him. “Tim is getting beat up.” Though he’d retired as a police officer 26 years ago, the training kicked in — that instinct to just stay calm. Savisky walked into the lot and saw Dyck – just 5-foot-2 – lying on his back as a man hit him, one blow and quickly another, so many times Savisky was worried Dyck might not survive many more. “He was just pounding on him, just wailing on him,” he said.

Savisky whacked the man on the back with his shovel twice. The man got up and came after him. So Savisky poked him in the face with the shovel. “I got a shovel, too,” the man told Savisky. He went to his van and pulled out a steel shovel with sharp edges.

The man swung it and Savisky raised his arm and blocked it. But he was worried the next swing might catch him in the head. “There was no place to go,” Savisky said. “I figured, hey, I better do the best I can here.” His wife was watching, on the phone with 9-11. As the man swung the shovel again, Savisky caught it by the pole and held onto it.

“Just take it easy, here,” he recalled saying. He talked to the man calmly for a few minutes. He said the man didn’t respond, just kept trying to wrestle the shovel free.

“I felt that he probably was high on something,” Savisky said. “It was kind of a blank expression. I could tell there’s something wrong.” He suggested the man get in his car and go. Eventually he drove off. Someone in the parking lot took down the licence plate before he left.

Savisky said he thought the man might come back, either with friends or with a firearm. “We better get out of here,” he told the people at the hall.

The concert was cancelled. Tim Dyck did not sing Consider the Lilies or any of the original songs he’d planned. He went to the hospital and was released with bruises on his face, scrapes and a twisted knee. After leaving the hospital, he had coffee with Wilf Savisky.

Police in Prince Albert said officers, working off the licence plate from the witness, arrested a 41-year-old man who was charged with three assault-related charges, including two counts of assault with a weapon (the shovel). In the days since, Dyck has thought about his drive to the hall, about what could have set off the man in the minivan. Could he have cut him off? No, not possible, he said.

“It was just the most random thing you could possibly think of,” he said. “I just remember his eyes more than anything.”