Skunk, police dog tag team backyard prowler

When trying to hide from police, first check that your hiding spot is unoccupied.

That was the lesson a St. Catharines man learned the hard way after his attempt to evade arrest ended with a run in with both a skunk and a police dog.

Richard Pickering was placed on probation for 12 months and fined $200 after he pleaded guilty Thursday in Ontario Court of Justice in St. Catharines to charges of prowling at night and possession of property obtained by crime.

Shortly before 3 a.m. on Feb. 8, 2017, court was told, a resident on Bristol Court in St. Catharines called Niagara Regional Police to report two hoodie-wearing males had parked a truck on his street and then walked into a neighbour’s backyard.

A police dog picked up the defendant’s scent and led officers across various backyards to a hedgerow behind a home.

As Pickering hid in the row of bushes and shrubs, he encountered a

skunk “who was not too pleased with him being there and sprayed him,” said defence counsel Donald Wolfe.

Pickering stayed put in spite of the smelly encounter, but soon came to regret that decision. The police dog tasked with finding the prowler not only located him but added injury to insult by biting him.

The defendant, who already wasn’t having the best of evenings, was taken to a local hospital for treatment of the dog bite where he was taken to a loading dock and sprayed down with a hose to deal with his offensive odour.

“He suffered a lot that evening,” Wolfe told Judge Ann Waston. “In some respect he’s the author of his own misfortune but, nonetheless, he suffered a lot.”