An Alberta man recently sustained a broken leg after he says he was shot at and run over by a pickup truck while checking on his neighbour’s property. He says he also fears rural crime in the province is getting worse.
“They don’t seem to have any fear,” Mike Stuber told Global News while speaking about the people he encountered in central Alberta just after 9 a.m. on Friday.
Stuber said suspicious activity was seen at his neighbour’s property near Barrhead, Alta., and he went to check it out as she feared a theft was taking place while she was away.
He said he drove up the driveway and saw several people. He then got out of his pickup truck and started to take photos of the suspects with his phone when they spotted him.
“They took a shot at me with a rifle with a scope on it,” Stuber alleged, adding that he then tried to get back to his truck to leave.
“They were in the vehicle, took off and ran over me.”
He said the suspects hit his truck as they fled the scene and that his leg was broken in five places. After being taken to an area hospital, he was airlifted to Grande Prairie for further treatment.
Stuber said while he realizes police are doing their job in his area, he believes violent criminals need to face steeper consequences from the justice system and that they sometimes “get out with a slap on the wrist and they’re back out in the community doing it again.”
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Cpl. Mathew Howell, a spokesperson for the Alberta RCMP, said that the suspects have yet to be identified by police but that a search was conducted by officers from various area detachments and the suspect vehicle was found.
He said officers were called Friday morning about three or four suspects believed to be trying to break into a vehicle on the property Stuber went to check on, but the suspects were already gone when they arrived.
“Initial reports say that a shot was fired,” Howell said. “We’re uncertain where the shot was fired towards or in what manner. We do know that the suspects got into that Ford F-350.”
Howell suggested what happened to the victim during daylights hours took him aback somewhat.
“When I got the initial reports, it was shocking to see,” he said.
Mike Stuber’s son, Trevor Stuber, told Global News he was driving to a rural property at the time the incident unfolded and saw a police vehicle speed past him. Around the same time, he said he missed a call from his mother. When he pulled over, he called her back.
“She said my dad was run over… She was kind of distraught.”
Trevor Stuber said like his father, he has concerns about what he believes is an escalation in crime in rural areas.
“All the neighbours here have young kids,” he said. “And these people are willing to do this to an elderly man.”
He added that while he believes “the cops do their job,” he worries that criminal offenders will not be sufficiently punished to deter them from doing it again.
“It’s been such a quiet place for years,” Trevor Stuber said. “(What happened to my father) gives me chills.”
“The frustration is understandable,” Howell said of the Stubers’ concerns.
He said that police hope once investigators finish inspecting the suspect vehicle, they may have evidence that points to a suspect or suspects.
Howell said maintaining unobstructed lines of sight on rural properties is one way property owners can mitigate the chance of thieves targeting them, or to help them see it if a crime is happening. He also said speaking with neighbours and telling them when you leave the property is a good idea, as is installing cameras on a property if possible.
According to Howell, the RCMP encourages rural Albertans to report all potentially criminal incidents, even if they are minor, as it can help police identify when a crime trend is occurring in a particular area.
“It creates a crime stat so we know something is going on,” he said.
–with files from Global News’ Morgan Black
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