A man confronted by the Surrey Creep Catchers vigilante group this week is a Coast Mountain Bus Company employee, TransLink has confirmed.
The unnamed employee appears to be wearing a CMBC shirt in footage of the incident, which took place Monday afternoon in a mall parking lot, but TransLink initially told CTV News he doesn’t work for the company.
“We’ve since determined that this individual is in fact an employee,” a spokesperson said in an email Friday. “He is not driving a bus, pending the outcome of an investigation by Surrey RCMP.”
But Mounties said they had finished investigating the incident by Tuesday, and no charges are being laid.
In a follow up email to CTV News, TransLink said an internal investigation was underway but no further information would be shared due to privacy concerns.
Creep Catchers, which aims to expose sexual predators on social media, claims the employee tried to set up a meeting with a 14-year-old boy outside Central City Mall.
After he was confronted by members, the situation escalated quickly, and he allegedly crashed his car into a parked pickup truck.
“I stuck a camera in his face and he throws it in reverse with his door open, hits the parked truck beside him, almost hits us with the door,” Ryan Laforge, founder of the Surrey chapter of Creep Catchers, said earlier this week.
There were dents in the pickup after the incident, but it’s unclear whether they were caused during the confrontation.
On Friday, Mounties confirmed they responded to a collision in a parking lot Monday afternoon and investigated the situation as a motor vehicle incident. The case has since been closed.
The RCMP has repeatedly cautioned against vigilantism, warning it can pose serious risk to everyone involved. It also said Creep Catchers’ activities can potentially hinder, rather than help, ongoing efforts to put sex offenders behind bars.
