Kelowna car crash takes violent turn with gunshot, pepper spray

Monday’s commute isn’t one that John Jameson and Ki Merkel will soon forget.

It was around 8 a.m. near Glenmore Road when an F150 left its lane and barrelled toward oncoming traffic.

Merkel saw it coming and swerved his SUV out of its path, hit a tree, and when he came to a stop realized the truck had gone on to hit another vehicle.

As he approached the crash site he saw a woman in a vehicle that had been hit screaming, and the person who caused the crash appeared “distraught, too,” Merkel said.

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Within seconds, John Jameson was also involved.  He’d seen Merkel swerve out of the way and the subsequent crash. He pulled over so he could avoid debris from the impact and wanted to help the woman, too.

As they tried to figure out what to do they saw the driver of the truck run to Jameson’s car, which he’d left open.

“I ran back and he closed the door just before I got there, but he didn’t lock it,” Jameson said. “I was able to get in and we fought and wrestled and, I didn’t realize it, but he had weapons,”

Jameson said the man then pulled a gun.

“He shot at me, missed me, somehow, point blank,” Jameson said.

“Then we kept fighting and that gun wasn’t working anymore so he tried to go for other guns.”

That’s when Merkel stepped in.

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“I grabbed his gun, I tried to shoot in the air,” Merkel said. “It didn’t work so I smashed the gun on the sidewalk. I took the magazine out and chucked the magazine.”

Jameson said that when Merkel was disposing of the gun he’d grabbed, the alleged shooter was reaching into a black bag and he continued to wrestle him for the keys.

Merkel came back, and the man then grabbed some pepper spray he had hanging around his neck and sprayed them both.

“He managed to weasel his way out,” Jameson said. “ I tried to get a choke on him but he was able to buck me off and then he sprayed me some more and ran off and stole someone else’s truck .”

They both acknowledge that without the other, things could have been much worse.

On Monday afternoon, RCMP confirmed they had arrested a suspect in connection with the case.