For the second time in 24 hours, vehicle thieves deliberately drove towards the police who were trying to intercept them, in the Côte-des-Neiges district of Montreal.
Late Wednesday evening, a little before midnight, three suspects stole a Dodge Challenger sports car, not far from the intersection of Sherbrooke Street West and Girouard Avenue.
SPVM patrol officers then tried to intercept them, but rather than stopping, the driver drove straight towards the police, hitting their patrol car in the process.
Luckily, they were not injured.
The description of the suspect vehicle was quickly shared on police radio and several patrol officers reportedly saw it during its flight, increasing the number of violations of the road safety code.
It was finally near the intersection of Henri-Bourassa Boulevard West and Tolhurst Street, in the Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough, that the suspect vehicle was located and then intercepted.
But the three young men who were on board fled, thereby provoking a major police operation to find them.
The police finally managed to catch them less than an hour later.
The suspects are Abdorrahman Tayeb Ali, 20 years old, Marc Elie Morisho, 18 years old and a 16 year old teenager who cannot be identified because he is a minor. The first two were scheduled to appear Thursday morning at the Montreal courthouse.
Morisho has no criminal history since he came of age, but the same is not true for Tayeb Ali.
The young man is awaiting trial in three separate cases, one for vehicle theft, one for complicity after the fact and another for kidnapping, armed assault, robbery, forcible confinement, break and enter, death threats and mischief . For this last case, he was released under conditions on May 31.
It was the second time in just 24 hours that Montreal police officers were targeted by vehicle thieves.
Tuesday evening, a police officer was injured in the leg while trying to intercept three young vehicle thieves who had just been caught in the act, in the parking lot of a hotel in the Côte-des-Neiges district.
The three suspects, a 19-year-old man and two 15-year-old teenagers, were arrested a few minutes later after being involved in an accident on Highway 40.
