When Burnaby RCMP Staff Sgt. Dave Eidet and his fiancée Terri set off for 150 Mile House last month to visit family, they hadn’t planned on spending part of that trip praying they wouldn’t have to witness an impaired driver run a stolen car head on into an oncoming vehicle.
“I’ve been doing this job a long time and it takes a lot to rattle me,” said Eidet, who’s been a Mountie for 40 years. “At least three times, he went fully into the oncoming lane for anywhere up to 30 seconds, maybe longer, and I’m just hoping and praying nobody is coming down the highway.”
The story played out on a dark stretch of Highway 97 between Cache Creek and Clinton on Feb. 26, after Eidet and Terri had made a pit stop at a Petro-Can on the way out of Cache Creek at about 7:35 p.m.
Inside the station they had run into a guy wearing a Calgary Flames jersey, and Eidet, a die-hard Canucks fan, couldn’t resist giving him the gears.
“Hey, I only paid five bucks for it,” the man had said with a good-natured laugh.
“Well, you paid too much,” Eidet had said.
Eidet and Terri would see the man again outside a short time later after they jumped into their pickup and prepared to get back on the road.
This time he was running after a silver Kia Rio that had just driven off.
“They just stole my car!” he yelled.
After Eidet got a plate number, Terri reassured the man he’d know what to do.
“We’re on it. He’s a cop,” she said as they drove off northbound toward Clinton.
Eidet called 911 and stayed on the line with a dispatcher in Kelowna who relayed his location to local police after he caught up with the stolen vehicle.
Travelling at speeds up to 80 kilometres an hour, Eidet kept his distance, but that didn’t make the pursuit any less harrowing, in part because of other drivers on the dark road.
“I am not exaggerating, this semi-tractor, not realizing what was going on, passed us, and this fellow in the Kia, I swear you couldn’t have fit my finger between the trailer and the car. That’s how close they came. And then the Kia pulled out and passed him and cut him off, and I thought he was going to get rear-ended.”
Other truckers, after getting close and witnessing the car’s erratic maneuvers, backed off.
“He was all over the road, weaving back and forth, hitting the shoulder, crossing the centre line,” Eidet said.
Finally, after about 30 excruciating minutes of hoping the Rio wouldn’t collide head-on with an unsuspecting driver coming the other way, the couple was told officers were in position on the outskirts of Clinton.
The 911 dispatcher told Eidet to flash his lights as he approached, and when he did, he could see police on the road with a spike belt.
The Rio rolled over it, flattening at least two tires, and a 34-year-old Williams Lake man was arrested a short distance away.
“Nobody would give me a ride, and I wanted to see my kids,” the man said to Eidet.
Despite his erratic and dangerous driving, he didn’t look drunk, according to Eidet, but the Mountie suspects some other intoxicant was involved.
It wasn’t till a few days later that it occurred to Eidet to ask his fiancée if she’d been scared at all.
“No, you know what you’re doing,” she said.
Why had the Burnaby Mountie chosen to take time out of his vacation to chase down a car thief?
“That’s kind of a tough question to answer without sounding corny,” he said. “It’s what I do. This was a crime in progress, and I took an oath to uphold the law, and it doesn’t say whether I’m on duty or off or in uniform or not. It’s not the first time I’ve been involved in something off-duty, and it probably won’t be the last.”
