On an eventful Wednesday in the small towns of Clinton and Seaforth, a stolen car case escalated to an alarming level with heightened police activity, a police shooting, and an ongoing manhunt.
Early Wednesday morning, a theft report of a vehicle set the day’s events in motion. The stolen vehicle was tracked down by plainclothes police officers and was followed discreetly until it halted in a driveway in Seaforth. Upon approach of the police, an unforeseen incident led to an officer’s discharge of a service weapon into the stolen vehicle, which then fled the scene.
The flurry of events took a dramatic turn when a man, age 35, who’d been in the stolen vehicle, presented himself at the Clinton hospital with a gunshot wound, coolly smoking a cigarette. According to Crystal Sauve, a witness at the hospital, the man casually announced his injury to the nurses who immediately rushed him for a medical attention. The injured man was later airlifted to another hospital for further treatment.
In a startling twist of events, the still-unidentified stolen vehicle was involved in yet another incident, this time a collision on Huron Street. The driver hastily exited the damaged vehicle and fled the scene on foot. In response, a forceful manhunt operation involving ground and aerial searches caused a temporary lock-down of Clinton’s local schools and hospitals.
A resident, Jesse Riley, had encountered a woman running past his house, unaware at the time that she was the person being pursued by the police. As the authorities provided a description of the suspect—a red or pink-haired woman in a white coat—Sauve, ironically also a pink-haired woman, found herself momentarily mistaken for the suspect and handcuffed in the emergency room. Though visually shaken, Sauve stated her fear of possibility of being wrongly convicted if not for the witnesses who stepped in to vouch for her.
Residents of Seaforth and Clinton were held in a tense suspension as sections of the towns were shut down while the Ontario Provincial Police and the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) conducted further investigations into the events that resulted in grave injury to a civilian, presumably by a police officer. Peace was restored as Highway 8 in Clinton reopened to traffic by Wednesday evening.
The exceptional Wednesday has left indelible memories for the small town residents, none more so than for Sauve, who was swept up in the whirlwind events and momentarily arrested in a case of mistaken identity.
Pursuant to the incident, SIU has invoked its mandate and will be taking over the investigation into the police shooting. SIU is a civilian, independent policing agency that conducts criminal investigations into incidents involving the police and civilians, which cause serious injury, death, or allegations of sexual assault.
