Mounties believe a hit-and-run suspect caught on camera driving a minivan with a blown tire and wide-open trunk in Burnaby last weekend was probably high on drugs.
Cpl. Darwin Tetreault said officers received a report that someone had slammed into a parked car on Gilpin Crescent early Saturday morning.
“A citizen woke up and a vehicle had been hit so hard that it had been pushed into a second parked vehicle behind it,” Tetreault said.
After arriving in the area, one Mountie ended up on the same street as a suspect vehicle – and was stunned to see its condition.
Footage taken from the officer’s dashboard camera shows the minivan’s front driver’s side tire was shredded, the headlight was out and the trunk was hanging open.
“Not something you see every day,” Tetreault said. “The officer, you can hear the surprise in his voice when he sees the tire and sees the car.”
Mounties said the driver, a 22-year-old man, is still a novice in ICBC’s graduated licensing program.
The officer who arrested him suspected he was on drugs, and the young man was taken to a detachment to give a urine sample.
Tetreault said the bizarre incident will likely result in charges of impaired driving and leaving the scene of an accident.
“It’s unusual to find the hit-and-run driver in the area the incident happened. More unusual to find him driving a vehicle that’s so heavily damaged,” he said. “Unfortunately, what’s not that uncommon is that the driver was extremely impaired.”
Tetreault said it’s fortunate no one was hurt, and reminded the public that driving on drugs can be just as dangerous as driving drunk.
“Both affect your ability to… do the complex task of driving,” he said. “They’re killing people.”
