TOFIELD — RCMP say a man who was wounded in a shootout with Mounties on a farm east of Edmonton will likely face attempted murder and firearms charges.
One officer had his arm grazed by a bullet and another was injured when he was run over by a truck driven by the suspect, who had been hiding in a shed.
RCMP Chief Supt. Randy McGinnis said it would be wrong for people to compare what happened Monday night to the 2005 ambush near Mayerthorpe, Alta., where four Mounties were gunned down by a man hiding in a Quonset hut on a rural farm.
“We weren’t protecting a scene. We weren’t waiting for other members to come to examine a scene, to seize other items like the Quonset in Mayerthorpe,” McGinnis said Tuesday.
“I have heard that we should have had our emergency response team there when we first went there.
“Well, if we went with an emergency response team to every potential witness that we wanted to interview, I think that we would be criticized for being a military state rather than a police force.”
The officer who was run over suffered broken bones and internal injuries and was undergoing surgery at an Edmonton hospital Tuesday afternoon.