The Badger » » Colony finds pervert wanted in three provinces

Colony finds pervert wanted in three provinces

24 March 2010 336 views 4 Comments

By Sheri Monk

A man who followed a Tompkins woman home from work and caused area schools to be locked down on Friday was finally captured by police. RCMP arrested the 40-year-old Keith Currie on Friday, after he somehow escaped capture at Tompkins on Thursday. Prior to his March 19 arrest, the school division was allegedly advised to keep children indoors in the event the suspect was intent on abduction. The man is answering several sexual charges in Ontario, including sexual assault with a weapon.

“The school emailed me the police bulletin and it they were looking for a white male, 40 – 50 years, in a Ford truck with B.C. licence plates that had been taking pictures of kids at schools in Tompkins and they thought he was trying to abduct children,” Delana Floberg of the Shaunavon Children’s Learning Centre.

Though the man is facing 43 criminal charges from Ontario, he is also facing charges from B.C., his recent crime spree took place in the Southwest.

On Thursday, March 18, a man described as middle-aged with grey hair and bad teeth kept visiting with a woman while she worked at a Tompkins business and eventually showed up at her front door. The employee has requested to remain anonymous.

“He came in here about four times from about 2 p.m., maybe until about, the last time was 4 p.m.,” she said.

The man told the worker he was from out east, which raised the woman’s suspicions.

“He told me he was from North Bay, Ontario, but he was driving a vehicle with B.C. plates, so that didn’t quite make sense to me.”

While the man apparently had to steal his ride, he did own an imagination, as evidenced by an exotic cover story.

“The very, very, very first time he came in, he told me he worked for National Geographic and he was just going around taking pictures and he wanted to take pictures of stuff around here,” said the woman.

The second time he came in, he wanted the physical address of the business, so he could send his paperwork into his boss.

The third time he entered the premises, he brought in a cold cup of Tim Hortons coffee he requested be warmed up.

“And the fourth time he came in, he gave me his whole life’s history. He basically said he worked in the army, his dad was in the military. He has three kids, two girls and a boy and the boy has autism. He himself told me he has Aspergers (a form of Autism) and OCD and suffered from depression,” the worker said.

Just after 4:30 p.m., the woman’s shift ended and she drove by the hotel to take down the man’s licence plate number.

“I saw his truck there and he told me he was thinking about getting a room there. So I just wrote his plate number down,” she said.

Shortly after she returned home, she heard the doorbell ring and there on her doorstep stood the man.

“I have a peek hole, I just looked through that saw it was him and I didn’t answer it. I ran to my daughter’s bedroom to see if he was leaving and just then my husband pulled up,” the woman described.

Though the man was leaving when the husband pulled in, he returned for a brief conversation to ask the husband if the woman lived there.

“He said, ‘I met her today and just tell her she’s really nice.’ And he said, ‘I was planning to stay at the hotel here in town tonight, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.’ So I think he was just looking for a place to stay,” said the woman, who also said police told her the man followed a similar modus operandi in the past.

“He did that in Salmon Arm. B.C., I guess. He stayed at some couple’s house and robbed them. From what I hear, he took all their stuff,” the woman said.

After the man left, the woman phoned RCMP and gave them the licence plate number of the truck, which is when she learned it was stolen.

The worker had not heard that the suspect had been taking photos of area children, but she did notice what seemed to be an disturbing behaviour that afternoon between visits to her workplace.

“I know he was kind of watching some kids from here, They were playing over at the slough thing there and he was watching them and I was watching him watch them. I thought that was a little odd.”

Once the woman reported the vehicle, the Swift Current Rural RCMP came looking for the suspect and while they found him, they weren’t quite able to nab him.

“We actually went into town to the service station around 6 p.m. for supper,” said Raymond Peterson, a local resident. “When we went to the service station, this vehicle is just leaving and I had seen where it went back in town. And in the meantime – we’d been there about 10 minutes – the police pulled up to the service station from Gull Lake.”

Peterson went outside and stopped the squad car and told the officer where the suspect had headed.

“So, he went into town and from everybody I’ve talked to he (RCMP officer) was kind of chasing him around awhile and finally got him pinned at the Legion and pushed the truck against the tree, with the cruiser behind and the guy (suspect) backed up and damaged the (police) car and then he took off. And the cop got out to look and see how much the car was damaged and the guy got away in Tompkins. He cut across a field southeast of Tompkins, an alfalfa field and he (the officer) couldn’t find his way out of town,” said Peterson.

Backup from Maple Creek were called to the scene, but the suspect had already escaped by the time they arrived.

The next day, on march 19, he was arrested in the afternoon at the Carmichael Hutterite Colony. Earlier in the day, members of the colony found the stolen truck was in a calving pen approximately two miles north of the colony. The only reason the truck was noticed was because the suspect had closed the door to the pen behind him, but it is usually left open.

Aware police were looking for the man, the colony contact RCMP and advised them the suspect could be hiding somewhere near the colony.

A short while later, the smell of cigarette smoke wafted through the air from the colony’s boiler room and the Hutterites alerted RCMP to the man’s exact location, where he was apprehended. He has been charged with possession of stolen property, flight from police and dangerous driving.

Charges from Ontario include invitation to sexual touching, sexual interference, sexual assault with a weapon, false pretenses, uttering a forged document, theft under $5,000, possession of property obtained by crime, and uttering a threat to cause death. Charges from B.C. are also expected.