QUESNEL, BC: Three people have been arrested following a series of events in Quesnel on Monday morning…

Police say on October 24, 2022, at approximately 6:20 AM, members responded to a theft of a 2000 Ford F-350 from a motel on Front Street in Quesnel.

Police were then notified around 7:23 AM, after suspects used the Ford vehicle to steal a boat and boat trailer from the Lakeview Crescent area of town. When the suspects attempted to flee the scene, they hadn’t attached the trailer properly to the trucks hitch and the boat trailer fell off sending it into a nearby yard. The suspects fled.

Not long after that fiasco, at approximately 7:50 AM, the suspects then entered a rural property in Alexandria and attempted to steal a UTV (side by side) with the stolen truck. That got the attention of the property owner who had attempted to stop the theft.

When the property owner attempts to stop the theft failed, the stolen truck collided with the property owner’s vehicle. The suspects were followed by the property owner south on Highway 97, where a second collision occurred at a rest stop. The stolen vehicle then fled north on Highway 97, where it rolled several times in the west ditch after failing to negotiate a driveway to a field.

Two of the suspects in the stolen vehicle were hurt in the collision while the third suspect stole a bystander’s Dodge 3500 welding truck and fled south on Highway 97.

Shortly thereafter, the Dodge was located on a rural property in Alexandria, hidden behind a building. When police approached the suspect driver once again, the truck fled at a high rate of speed, narrowly missing an RCMP officer.

The suspect was running out of options as police were closing in on the Dodge. The suspect had then driven into yet another yard and stole a quad from the driveway. The suspect was determined to get away from following officers and entered a field, drove through a barbed wire fence, and rolled down a steep embankment which led officers to the Fraser River.

With the assistance of a RCMP police dog and a police helicopter, the suspect was located and arrested after he swam across the Fraser River to the west side. The suspect was exhausted and later transported to the hospital with symptoms of hypothermia.

The two suspects injured in the rollover were also transported by ground ambulance with non-life threatening injuries.

The results of the investigation will be forwarded to the BC Prosecution Service for assessment of charges for all three of the suspects.