Two arrested after crash leads to discovery of ‘explosive device’
Police say a report of a singlevehicle crash in Beecher Bay led to a pair of arrests and the discovery of an explosive device.
Sooke RCMP officers arrived to East Sooke and Yates roads to find a crashed vehicle and an injured woman believed to be a passenger, but no driver.
Police then learned that there was an explosive device in the area linked to the woman and called the RCMP explosive disposal unit.
No further details about the explosive device were immediately available from RCMP.
Meanwhile, police received a report that a security guard had been attacked nearby and a truck was stolen.
An officer patrolling the area spotted the stolen truck down an embankment, RCMP said. The driver, believed to have been the driver in the initial crash, was arrested for charges that included vehicle theft and assault with a weapon.
The security guard, a supervisor with the Scia’new First Nation, asked not be named but told CHEK news she reached the crash scene before police arrived and discovered that the driver had fled into the bush.
She drove off to see if she could spot anything and said she saw a man trying to enter a home and confronted him, and asked if he had been involved in the crash.
He said he hadn’t and claimed to have been dropped off by a friend, but the security guard said people in the home did not want him there so she told him to leave the area.
Later, she said she saw him trying to break into another home, and he demanded her truck when she approached.
He pulled out a gun when she refused.
“He hit me with the butt of the gun two times in the face and punched me once and while I was trying to fight him off,” she told CHEK.
She said the gun went off and she heard the truck’s passengerside window break.
She was bloodied and exited the vehicle, and 911 was called.
Her injuries include a facial fracture and she will need to see plastic surgeon, she said.
“So I’m grateful that I was able to intervene there but upset that I received the injuries that I did.”
Both crashed vehicles were towed and seized for forensic analysis, police said.
East Sooke Road was closed for several hours as police investigated.
Police ask anyone with information to contact Sooke RCMP at 250-642-5141.