RCMP are indicating it may have been a dispatch problem that led to a delay in officers following up a potential lead in the search for Merritt murder suspect Allan Schoenborn. Two clerks at a Cherryville store phoned the police tip line on Wednesday when a man they believed was Schoenborn came into their business to return some empties. One of them then phoned the Lumby detachment the next day to see why there had been no action. Deanna Holland and Wendy Mazu say it wasn't until Saturday that an officer arrived to take their statement.
Vernon RCMP Inspector Steve McVarnock who is in charge of the North Okanagan detachment, addressed the issue with the media on Monday. "I've done a review of this information this morning and what I know so far is that our Lumby detachment members, who we were told were the ones contacted by the caller, did not receive any information on this until they received a call from our dispatch on Friday afternoon concerning a possible sighting on Wednesday. "As a result of that information, our members went to meet with the caller very early in the evening on Friday and made an assessment it was not the same person police were looking for."In terms of why it took from Wednesday to Friday for us to intervene is what were looking at right now. The information I have is that the caller contacted the Lumby detachment, and when you contact there, it could mean you've contacted the Vernon detachment as we are the hub of Lumby. If you do call Lumby, sometimes you can be put through to our dispatch centre if there's nobody in the office at that time. So we're trying to track exactly when the call was placed and then we'll do a call tracer to see who actually took that call but I can tell you that none of the members of the Lumby detachment were aware of this informaiton until late Friday."
Deanna Holland ,who works at the Cherryville Emporium, says she is 100 percent sure the man she saw was the Merritt suspect.
No comments:
Post a Comment