LLOYDMINSTER, Alta. – Police have charged a man who they allege confronted another man with a video camera and accused him of trying to meet up with a young boy in what is being called a case of mistaken identity.
RCMP allege the suspect approached a man last weekend outside a restaurant in Lloydminster, on the Alberta-Saskatchewan boundary.
When the suspect with the camera accused the other man of being there to meet a child, police say the second man got into his car and drove away.
Police say a vehicle followed him, blocked him in, and the man with the camera demanded he get out.
Police say the man being videotaped feared for his safety and hit a parked car while trying to flee.
Sgt. Jack Poitras said the man who was confronted wasn’t even the person the man with the camera was looking for.
Poitras said that while police understand the public wants to help stop child-luring, it’s always better to get the law involved.
He noted the evidence that people collect on their own is useless in court.
It’s not the first time that citizens who try to gather such evidence have had a run in with the law recently.
Two men in B-C were charged with assault earlier this year in an alleged altercation involving a man accused to having been involved in child luring.
The person charged in the Lloydminster case, Chase Brian Karnes, 22, from Marsden, Saskatchewan faces counts of common nuisance, criminal harassment and mischief.
He will appear in provincial court in Lloydminster on Aug. 28.