A five-hour search by an RCMP tracking dog led to the Thursday (March 13) arrest near Dead Man’s Flats of a B.C. man suspected of stealing a truck in Drayton Valley.
Dorian Bell, 25, of Enderby, B.C. has been charged with possession of stolen property, flight from police, obstructing a police officer, possession of a narcotic, speeding and three counts of failure to comply with conditions. He was remanded to Calgary for an appearance in Provincial Court.
Initially, say RCMP, Bell was clocked at 143 km/h on the Trans-Canada Highway at the Three Sisters overpass east of Canmore at about noon during routine speeding enforcement. Bell drove a 2012 Dodge Ram quad cab pickup on the offramp from the highway, made the turn onto the Bow River Campground road and, when he tried to drive around a gate which closed the road, the truck became hung up on rocks at the side of the road.
Bell then ran into the woods and several RCMP members headed after him. A check of the truck’s licence plate indicated it had been stolen during the night of March 12-13. Members on-site couldn’t find Bell, so Cpl. Francois Decelles and police dog Titan were called in from Calgary.
Decelles and Titan were on scene by about 2:30 p.m. and tracked Bell through the woods on the north side of the highway from the overpass to a location east of Dead Man’s Flats, where he was arrested after 7 p.m. In all, Bell had been in the woods for about seven hours.
“He said he was going home,” said Sgt. Ryan Currie, Friday (March 14). “He was supposed to be at his residence in B.C., that was one of the conditions on him and he had a small amount of marijuana and a drug he said was meth on him.
“The dog service did a great job in finding him.”
