Thieves nab new ATV and the pickup carrying it
by FRANK PEEBLES Citizen staff
A Saskatchewan man who is visiting family in Prince George never even got a chance to start his brand new ATV before thieves stole it.
Gordon Petrisor sold his house after his wife passed away in April and was going to spend the next while driving between Prince George and Calgary where his kids live.
However, when Petrisor arrived in Prince George Wednesday night, with a new quad he purchased in Red Deer sitting in the back of his truck, it was too late to take it on a maiden voyage so he backed his newly refurbished 1988 Ford 4x4 up against a wall so the quad in the back was safe from thieves.
"By god, they took the truck and everything," Petrisor said Tuesday. "I never dreamed someone could possibly steal it all, 50 feet from the people across the street."
Prince George RCMP are looking for the truck and its expensive cargo. When a theft happens in a residential area like this one did, a certain profile of the thief emerges, Mounties explained. A common place for vehicles to go missing is in the vicinity of a crackshack. Those are not the same kinds of thefts as someone hunting in a neighbourhood for a plumb vehicle to zero in on, said Const. Ryan Arnold, head of the city's BAIT Car program.
"We deploy them as effectively as we can," Arnold said of the special cars that contain cameras and special electronic devices that allow police to turn off the vehicle. "We have a civilian member who is tasked with mapping stolen autos for us and we try to co-ordinate based on the best information we can get on those patterns. But it is a lot like fishing, sometimes the fish don't bite and sometimes you catch a big one. We try to position ourselves to hammer our most prolific guys."
It is believed to be one of these few but active habitual car thieves that made off with Petrisor's vehicles. The pickup is red and white, and although it is almost 20 years old, "it looked like a new vehicle." The quad is a red Bombardier Can-Am Outlander 800 so new "I didn't even get a chance to sit on it."
Petrisor is offering a reward for information leading to the recovery of his vehicles. Anyone with information is asked to call Prince George RCMP at 561-3300 or the anonymous Crime Stoppers tips service at 1-800-222-TIPS /
www.pgcrimestoppers.bc.ca.
