A 33-year-old man is facing charges following an incident on Monday night in which a truck driver was held at gunpoint for four hours as he drove from Avola to Kamloops.
RCMP Cpl. Dan Moskaluk say the incident began at about 4 p.m. south of Avola when an officer came across a driver slumped behind the wheel of a running minivan at the Wire Cache rest area.
Moskaluk said the Mountie placed the driver in the rear seat of the police cruiser as the man was suspected of being under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
But the man managed to overpower the officer and escape from the cruiser. He jumped in his minivan and raced north on Highway 5.
Moskaluk said the driver forced a pickup truck to stop on the highway about three kilometres south of Avola.
“The officer pulled up to observe that the suspect was armed with what appeared to be a handgun as the suspect approached the pickup truck,” Moskaluk said.
“Upon the officer’s arrival, the suspect abandoned his attempts which permitted the unharmed driver of the truck to flee. Once again, the suspect fled northbound.”
The suspect then smashed the window of a semi-truck in an unsuccessful attempt to have the driver help him escape, police said.
The man then jumped into a second semi-truck parked nearby, threatened the driver and brandished a gun. The trucker drove southbound, with Mounties following in unmarked vehicles, police said.
“Police were able to communicate with the driver via telephone who feigned he was speaking to his dispatcher in order to not alert the suspect,” Moskaluk said.
He noted a tactical plan was devised to have the driver escape the truck once it stopped at the designated site, which happened to be the weigh scales on the Coquihalla Highway, just south of the Copperhead Road exit in Kamloops.
The truck driver, 43-year-old Robert Price, told Global News the man who commandeered his vehicle nodded off periodically during the drive to Kamloops.
Price said the man was asleep when he pulled into the weigh scales and escaped the truck.
Moskaluk said the gas canisters were used in an unsuccessful bid to get the suspect out of the truck. Instead, he tried to drive the rig, only to crash and overturn its load of lumber in a few hundred metres away.
Moskaluk said the suspect received a minor dog bite while being arrested, noting a handgun was found in the cab of the truck.
Charged with kidnapping, use of a firearm in the commission of an offence and other counts is David Lee Chappell.
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