Cutting himself while sawing off the shotgun, gave us our first big break, for we learned from Trevor’s statement that the culprit’s left hand was bandaged. What was more, it was bandaged professionally. A quick call to the hospital and I learned that there had been two people get their hand bandaged because of cuts in the past two days. One, a middle aged man, had his right hand bandaged, The other, a youth from out of town, came in Wednesday with a cut on his left hand. It looked as though we’d found our man.
Or rather we had found our man’s name. He was from Turner Lake, we had not had any dealings with him, and we had no idea where he might be found. It was time to get creative. A quick call to the detachment that looks after Turner Lake got us the name and phone number of his mother. But we really had no idea if she would be co-operative with us, and we needed to find this guy, so I resorted to trickery. I had one of the stenos call her, and say that she was from the hospital. Jonny (not his real name, a youth at the time of the offences he can’t be identified by law) had cut himself slightly the other day but left the hospital without signing a minor form, and could she tell us where we might find him. Success. He had two aunt’s in La Ronge, both working at the daycare, and he’d be staying at one of their residences.
We went to the daycare where we met with both of Jonny’s Aunts, and this time we didn’t resort to any trickery. We explained to them what had taken place over the last couple of days, and that we needed to arrest Jonny as we believed that he was responsible. From them we learned that Jonny had been a blue baby and as a result had some mental challenges. We also learned that he had long been fascinated by guns and the military, and that he occasionally couldn’t control his temper. He had been staying at his one aunts, whose apartment was located at the other end of the bush trail the car was abandoned at. She couldn’t leave but we had her permission to go to the apartment, and her key. There were other youths there.
By this time it was already afternoon, Tom and I had been working non-stop since 5:00 am, the others since not long after that. And although we were thinking we were finally going to finish up with this, in truth we were just getting started.
We entered the apartment, quietly and quickly, fully expecting to find an armed youth, who had already taken a shot with a handgun. But Jonny was not there, just his cousins. In his room we found a few rifle, shotgun and .22 rounds, and wet muddy clothes. There were also lots of magazines, gun magazines, Soldier of Fortune and the like. From his cousins we learned that Jonny had come home early in the morning, and slept for awhile. Then he left around 11:30 with a small gym bag. They had no idea where he had gone. We went to his other aunt’s apartment but he had not been there at all.
It was time to regroup, we had no longer had any idea where to look. We headed back to the office. We wanted to figure out what we were going to do next, and we wanted to call his parents and fill them in. We were just walking in the back door when the call came in. A Natural Resources officer at Waden Bay, a little north of La Ronge had two tourists in his office. They had just been shot at by a young man at a cabin. We were back on again, heading to Waden Bay, and now we had night shift to help.
The tourists spent a couple of weeks each summer boating and camping at Lac La Ronge. The year before they were exploring and checked out a boarded up cabin north of Waden Bay. There they had found a patch of rhubarb. On this day, they had a hankering for some, so they returned to the cabin. As fate would have it, rhubarb almost cost them their lives.
To be continued….
Comments
3 responses
I like rhubarb. I didn’t realize how dangerous it could be. Tell me more Clare.
I always knew rhubarb was dangerous, everyone always told me the leaves were poisonous.
I’ve been nervous since I read about the tantrum the perpetrator had while stealing the guns…more, please!