Brian Johnson was at home Saturday night when he got a call from police that his 1,000-pound compactor had been taken from a job site near Ladysmith and dragged down the highway until it was in pieces.
“The police accounts and several eyewitness accounts said that it was just sparks and fireworks the whole way through town, because it’s a metal compactor dragging on the asphalt,” said Johnson, owner of Johnson Contracting Inc.
The officer who called Johnson told him he had intercepted a man who was in the process of winching the compactor onto a dump truck around 10:30 p.m.
“The guy jumped in his truck and peeled off with the compactor still half kind of on his truck and chained up. Of course, the compactor fell off and he ended up dragging it,” Johnson said.
The man dragged the compactor about 10 kilometres down the highway from the Oyster Bay area of Ladysmith to Panorama Ridge Road, where it separated from the vehicle and was recovered by police.
The compactor, which is used to compact dirt after loosening it during excavation, was nearly new and was worth about $20,000, said Johnson, who expects to get about half the value covered by insurance.
“It’s in three pieces. It’s done… I’d be lucky to get parts off it,” he said.
The initial officer pursued the man and attempted to pull him over, but stopped when it became obvious the man was not going to obey, said Staff Sgt. Kris Clark, senior media relations officer for B.C. RCMP.
A suspect was eventually located in Shawnigan Lake, Clark said. No arrests have been made and police continue to investigate the incident, he said.
The dump truck the man was driving to take the compactor also turned out to be stolen, Clark said.
