crime

 by Brendon J. Wilson

Googling for Crooks

Received the following email from my father on a recent criminal case cracked via Google:

Last night there was a documentary on the CBC on a cold case. This cop had a 100% success rate on cold cases and took on the case of a plane that had been hijacked from Thunderbay (en route to Toronto) to Cuba. All he had to go on was the hijacker’s name and a thumb print they managed to lift from a pop can. The hijacker disappeared into the cane fields of Cuba.

His first tool, would you believe, was a Google search on the name. There was only one hit who turned out to a high school history teacher in the states. To cut a long story short: he was the guy. When arrested his comment was “What took you so long?”

The guy was a black social activist in the 60’s who got involved with the Black Panthers and a bank robbery. The robbery went bad and he fled to Canada. Convinced that the law was hot on his trail he boarded a local flight in Thunderbay and, armed with a revolver, demanded the side trip to Cuba. The irony of the story is that flights from Canada to Cuba were, and still are, legal. All he had to do was buy a ticket.

Of course he was tried and convicted of the hijacking and received a three year sentence which he has since served. He is now back in the mainstream and because of his record he could no longer teach.

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 by Brendon J. Wilson

An Eventful Evening

It’s been a stressful couple of weeks, what with all the exams I’ve been writing lately, so I haven’t had much time to blog. That aside, I didn’t have many spare brain cells left to write with or any interesting events to report. And just when I thought I had nothing to write, I get assaulted on the way to the movies.

Ashley and I were going to see a movie up on Granville Street and were just crossing the intersection of Nelson and Richards when we saw a man strike a woman. At first, I thought it was a guy being a jerk to his girlfriend, but then he rushed at Ashley and me, striking me in the side of the head. No big damage, but it was a bit of a shock. He was yelling and obviously just looking for a fight. Ashley and I put a bit of distance between ourselves and him and went to help the woman.

At this point, I started thinking straight and asked Ashley to dial 911 on her cell phone. Of course, the one time we actually need a cell phone, she doesn’t have it. I watched as across the street the man proceeded to kick at a taxi and get into another scuffle with another man. I signaled to a woman in a car to dial 911 on her phone. She was in some kind of stupor and took forever to pull out her phone and start dialing. By that time, the man that had been involved in the scuffle had dialed 911. I approached him and used his phone to talk to the police.

We followed the man down into Yaletown, keeping our distance while giving the police directions and a description of the man. The police caught up with us near the Opus hotel and arrested the man (much to the chagrin of a classmate I ran into just as the police showed up).

As it turns out, the man had a mental condition of some kind.

What should have been an episode that would only make me further cynical about the human condition turned into quite the opposite when I met up with Ashley at a local Starbucks. As it turned out, the Starbucks manager had given her a free latte while she waited for me, which was a pretty decent thing to do. And it happened again when we went for dinner: we were a little zoned out so Ashley explained to our waitress what had happened. The manager came over and explained he’d had a similar experience in the restaurant a few nights ago. Then he gave us our drinks on the house!

Wow. Maybe people aren’t so bad after all. Only in Vancouver could I get assaulted and end up feeling better about humankind. How’s that for something to write about?

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