The RCMP said a 37-year-old man from Newfoundland has been charged with several offences, including the assault of a police officer, after a heated confrontation at an oilworkers camp north of Fort McMurray, which ended with a Taser being deployed.
Police said officers were called to the Athabasca Lodge to deal with an intoxicated man who refused to leave the facility when asked. They said officers were able to arrest the suspect but he avoided being handcuffed and then allegedly threatened to hurt the officer.
“The cop and him met in the middle of a hallway and the cop told him he had to leave,” Rory Holloway, a worker at the camp who witnessed the confrontation, told Global News on Friday. “It just escalated very quickly.”
Holloway posted a video to Facebook of what happened after. The profanity-laced video is about two minutes long and shows the suspect continuously approaching a Mountie who has his Taser drawn.
On the video, the suspect is heard saying “shoot me” over and over as he approaches the officer while holding a backpack in front of his torso. The officer continuously backs away while yelling “get on the ground” multiple times.
“You didn’t really know how it was going to go,” Holloway told Global News. “It was a pretty… close situation.”
On two occasions, the officer is seen lunging at the suspect and he is able to grab the backback out of his hand and throw it to the side. Both times the suspect immediately grabs a different backpack lying on the ground. The third time the suspect is seen picking up a backpack, the officer Tasers him as the suspect kneels down.
Holloway said he believes the Taser hit the suspect in the face but that he was able to be escorted out of the lodge by police on foot. The RCMP have described the man’s injuries as non-life threatening.
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According to Holloway, the incident happened late Thursday afternoon when most workers had finished their shift and arrived back at camp to relax.
The video of the confrontation has since gone viral on Facebook, accumulating over 350,000 views by Friday night.
The RCMP said Scott Thomas Lake has been charged with assault of a police officer, obstruction of a police officer, uttering threats and mischief under $5,000.
Lake is scheduled to appear in Fort McMurray Provincial Court on June 21.