A 44-year-old man has been arrested after he walked into a business on Allsbrook Road wielding a machete and reportedly acting “crazy.”
The man, carrying two machetes and a bat entered Jett Auto Auction on Thursday, July 26 around 10:30 a.m.
“I was working in the office, I was on the phone with a customer and then I heard a loud motorcycle pull into the car lot,” said 20-year-old Nathan Bouchard. “My coworker went outside to see what was going on and then I heard her shout something so I looked out the window and the guy came running into the office with two machetes and a kind of bat.”
Bouchard said at first he thought someone was pulling a prank on him but soon realized the situation was serious when the man began swearing and yelling slurs at him. He said the man, who was wearing a scarf over his face and sunglasses, kept yelling “where is she?” and “where’s the blond?”
“Then finally he came behind the counter and got right in my face and was like ‘where’s the blond?’ I said ‘man, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bouchard said. “He was getting agitated or something and took a swing fairly close to me. I was like alright, so I guess this is the end.”
After a bit more yelling, the man ran back out the door and Bouchard immediately called the cops.
The man then rode his bike to a neighbouring business where he broke into a travel trailer, said Jesse Foreman of the Oceanside RCMP in a press release. After “severely damaging the trailer,” the man turned his attention to a home on the property.
“He approached the home and used his machete to smash his way in through a sliding glass door.”
Inside the home was a woman and her two young children who were startled and quickly fled out the front door,” according to RCMP.
“He continued to smash items in the home and then proceeded to jump on the roof which is where he was found, summoned down, and arrested by the police.”
Bouchard said he watched the whole ordeal unfold and believes the man suffered from mental health issues.
“He was on something and a little mentally unstable I guess,” Bouchard said. “I don’t think he was actually looking to hurt anyone, he was just looking to find that person, whoever that person was.”
The suspect, a Parksville man, was not known to any of the business owners or the mother and her children, Foreman said.
Foreman said it appeared to police, “and was reported by the suspect” that he was “mentally unstable due to excessive drug use.”
RCMP said the man has been taken for a psychiatric assessment and will then be held on several charges for court.
— NEWS Staff
