RCMP: This week's 'shouldn't-have-done-that' award
By Castlegar Source
Castlegar police, while encouraging Olympic enthusiasm, are cautioning residents against overdoing it.
RCMP Cpl. Mike Mysko, in charge of the city’s new Crime Reduction Unit, had an illustrative example of what not to do while celebrating the Olympic spirit.
“(On the evening of Jan. 21), I was working one of our very first evening shifts in the crime reduction position, when a call came in of several youths walking North on 7th Avenue past the high school, drinking beer and acting rowdy,” Mysko explains. “I checked the youths, however none wanted to lay claim to ownership of the case of beer which, by this time, was sitting on the sidewalk.
“ I advised them that I was seizing the beer when one of the 17 year old male youths quickly took off his shirt, shoes and pants – right down to his underwear.
“He grabbed the pack of beer and ran up 7th Avenue, almost nude, while attempting down as much beer as he could,” said Mysko, who then followed the youth in an unmarked vehcile with emergency lights ablaze.
The low-speed, highly-odd chase went on for about half a block before the nearly naked young man, tired and presumably cold in the sub-zero temperatures, slowed and was subsequently apprehended.
“I am certain he was acting in the spirit of the Olympics,” Mysko said, “as it was like a torch run with a beer in hand.”
The youth was arrested and his clothes recovered before he was brought back to the detachment while police called his parents.
“He was charged for consumption in public and given and $250 dollar fine after the beer was recovered and seized,” Mysko said. “Charges of obstruction were not pursued, however he was turned over to his guardians, who most certainly will be administering a punishment of their own.
“He was lectured on the serious consequences his actions could have, as he could have been charged criminally for obstruction.”
