Despite having his wife and young son in the car, a 34-year-old Saanich man took issue with another driver and pointed a replica handgun at the fellow motorist as they were driving toward Victoria on the Trans-Canada Highway.
By the time things settled down, the gun-wielding driver had been arrested in a police takedown and given an October court date.
"This is another example of realistic firearms, something that we deal with on a regular basis," said Saanich police Sgt. Dean Jantzen.
"Our officers have to treat it as a real firearm until they're able to prove otherwise."
The incident began on the Malahat about 7 p.m. Monday.
A 17-year-old and 20-year-old in the other vehicle, a truck, said the trouble started when the man in the car began to tailgate them. He was towing a jet ski behind his Dodge Avenger and witnesses said he had been swerving aggressively from lane to lane.
When the two vehicles reached the Helmcken overpass, the older man pulled alongside the truck and waved the replica firearm - an air-powered pellet gun described by Jantzen as "extremely realistic-looking."
Jantzen said police were told that the man reached across the passenger seat of his car and pointed the gun out the window at the truck.
Both people in the truck then heard what sounded like a gunshot. They phoned 911 and pulled over to wait for police.
Police are looking at the possibility that the gun was discharged but did not have a projectile in it.
The older motorist turned off the highway at McKenzie Avenue. He was stopped on Saanich Road by several police cars.
"We obviously dispatched multiple officers just given the fact that it was described as a real pistol," Jantzen said.
The man's 33-year-old common-law wife and fouryear-old son were safely removed from the vehicle, and the Ministry of Children and Family Development was informed about the incident.
After his arrest, the driver was "quite contrite," Jantzen said, adding that an independent witness who saw some of what happened has come forward.
Jantzen said the issue of imitation weapons made to look genuine comes up regularly for police.
"The level of realism for some of these knock-off replicas is out of this world," he said, describing the gun that was seized as the "spitting image" of an actual firearm.
"It's all metal, there's no plastic parts, and it has the weight and feel of something that's real."
