B.C.’s police watchdog has wrapped up an investigation into a deadly motorcycle crash in Grindrod and concluded that police didn’t chase the rider and were not to blame for the fatality.
“The evidence corroborates that officers followed RCMP policy and did not pursue the motorcycle, arriving at the collision scene minutes after it had occurred,” the Independent Investigations Office of B.C. (IIO) said in a statement.
The head-on collision that occurred on Aug. 30 on Highway 97A was the end of a series of incidents between Lake Country and Grindrod involving the motorcycle that day.
According to the IIO, the motorcycle rider came to police attention around 11 a.m. when police got “several reports…about a motorcyclist who was riding erratically, without a helmet and without license plates.”
RCMP officers tried to pull over the rider in Lake Country but he “did not stop, ran a red light, and continued north,” the IIO said.
The IIO said the rider later fell off his motorbike in the driveway of an Enderby house and took off when an officer got there but police didn’t chase him.
However, he only made it another nine kilometres, the IIO said, before crossing into oncoming traffic on a corner and getting into a head-on collision.
The motorcyclist died two days later in hospital.
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