On Tuesday, a clerk at Prince Albert’s provincial courthouse printed out a list of charges that Twobears Bird was facing that morning.
It ran seven full pages long.
As part of a deal with the Crown, 19-year-old Bird pleaded guilty to a string of rural property crimes and high-speed chases this spring. Judge S. Schiefner sentenced him to six months time served, as well as an additional year in jail.
Crown prosecutor Cynthia Alexander guided Schiefner through Bird’s season of crime, which was centred in the RM of Buckland and the Sturgeon Lake First Nation. In April, the RCMP linked him with a series of break-and-enters and the theft of a Chevy truck and a Wildcat ATV.
The truck and the ATV were eventually recovered, but Bird ended up with warrants for his arrest. On May 13, an RCMP constable spotted him getting into a vehicle by the Sturgeon Lake store. When he confirmed that it was Bird, he opened up the driver’s side door to place him under arrest.
“The accused, at that point, puts the vehicle in drive and drives away,” Alexander explained. “Cst. Link is partially inside the vehicle when the vehicle starts to take off, so Cst. Link spins away from the vehicle to avoid injury.”
Another RCMP officer tailed Bird as he fled at high speed toward a field. The vehicle was identified as stolen.
Police found Bird again on May 15, in a grey Chevy truck reported stolen from Meadow Lake. That morning, Sturgeon Lake RCMP got a report that Bird was driving impaired and “stunting.”
For more on this story, see the September 13 edition of the Prince Albert Daily Herald.
