Thief in stolen carpet cleaning truck leaves trail of damage
A Regina carpet cleaning business fielded a number of calls from irate motorists Monday about nearly being hit by the company’s van — except the culprit at the wheel was making a clean getaway.
Cleanrite Carpet Cleaning owner Kevin Volk and a co-worker were in the midst of a job in “a really nice neighbourhood” in the city’s south end when suddenly the cleaning hoses attached to its service van started ripping away — as did the van itself.
“Everything was hooked up,” said Volk. According to police, the wayward van left a trail of water and damaged vehicles in its wake and nearly hit a pedestrian before the driver was arrested. Police believe the van replaced a stolen car that was dumped after crashing.
“We’re shocked,” said Volk as he stood in the east-end neighbourhood where the van finally hit the end of the road, some 10 kilometres from where it began if it had taken a direct route. It veered through a front-yard hedge, smashed into a fence and landed in the backyard of a house on the southwest corner of Braun Bay and University Park Drive.
Merely one block further up the street, children at a daycare played outdoors in a fenced yard as police investigated.
Staffing Cleanrite’s phone, Volk’s wife Sharmain was inundated by calls from angry motorists as the dangerous driver stained the company’s good name. “He almost hit us!” they told her. Sharmain urged them to call police with the cleaning van’s location.
“They were chasing it,” she said, explaining she understood police were pursuing the vehicle after her husband reported the theft.
Regina Police Service (RPS) spokeswoman Elizabeth Popowich confirmed officers were following the speeding vehicle at points but couldn’t provide details as the incident is under review by RPS’s internal pursuit review board, use of force committee (due to the use of a spike belt), and an accident review board (because a couple unmarked police vehicles “got bumped.”)
“There would have been as much communication as possible between the watch commander and supervisors and our members out on patrol who got glimpses of this vehicle ... All the information still has to come in, and it will all be to ensure that everyone followed policy,” Popowich added.
Volk said the crime will cost his business dearly as his lone service vehicle is now “totalled off.” In the company’s 15-year history, “this has never happened before,” said Sharmain.
The string of events began at 8:46 a.m. with a report of a grey sedan hitting a tree on Cardinal Crescent. Despite what police called significant damage, the car kept going. Officers did get a suspect description.
A short time later, a four-door sedan hit a vehicle in the 2800 block of Thornton Avenue. The driver abandoned the car and fled on foot.
At 9:28 a.m., the white van, with the company’s name and number prominently displayed, was taken from a house in the 3000 block of L’Arche Crescent. Over the next several minutes, police patrol units tried to locate the van as it drove erratically around south Regina.
“There were times we lost sight of it and then someone would report this white van and a trail of water. And we’d pick it up from there,” explained Popowich.
Police got more reports of a white van colliding with, or nearly hitting vehicles. At one point, it went overland across the lawn in Wascana Centre, according to one witness.
Just after 10 a.m., officers tried unsuccessfully to “contain” the van at Mullin Avenue — only to have it take off again. After nearly hitting a semi, the van was finally slowed by a spike belt in east Regina, but carried on and hit the fence and a residential water tap on Braun Bay.
Some area residents told the Leader-Post they heard what sounded like a speeding vehicle turning too fast and stepped outdoors to find more than a dozen marked and unmarked police vehicles, numerous officers and an ambulance had descended on their otherwise quiet neighbourhood.
Police said a suspect exited the van and was arrested.
“Fortunately, there was no one injured in these incidents,” the RPS said in a news release, noting there were at least three vehicle collisions, two property crashes, and three near-collisions.
A 26-year-old man faces a number charges, including evading police.
The RPS asked that anyone with witness information to report it to the front desk at headquarters.