An interesting end to the situation after a Trail man had his wallet stolen from an unlocked vehicle.
Early Monday morning, resident Jeff Bruce reported his wallet stolen as well as his son’s and was able to follow some of the transactions on the stolen cards with help from his banks.  Receiving a description of the suspects from one of the businesses, he then located the two males at the Waneta Mall. After a short chase, one of the the men gave up and Bruce convinced him to turn himself into RCMP and get some help, which the 21-year-old suspect agreed to, according to Bruce.
“I told them, you know, you’re on video using my card fraudulently. Your best bet is to maybe go get treatment, get help and if you’re willing to I’ll take you to the police station and you can start the process to man up. The other guy took off and he came up to me and said yeah, I do need to go get help. I took him into the station and he confessed to doing it and hopefully he’s going to get help.”
Trail RCMP are advising residents not to take situations like this into their own hands; however, in this case Bruce ended up knowing both males involved and could negotiate without the use of physical force.
“I mean you could tell it was a good family, he’s made some bad decisions. There’s no need to be rough or forceful. I just kind of extended the olive branch, that if you need to get help this is the path to go on and he decide that I made some sense. I drove him up there, I said I’d buy you a cup of coffee but you guys already took my money.”
The items stolen from Bruce’s vehicle were returned, minus the cash. The Trail General Investigative Section is investigating both males for the theft of wallets and for fraudulent use of the credits cards and Trail and Greater District RCMP Detachment is currently pursuing an investigation into the second male suspect,
Sergeant Mike Wicentowich also reminds the public to lock their vehicles in Trail and surrounding areas.
“Every day, there’s items being stolen from unlocked vehicles. This includes wallets, phones, purses and other items are sometimes a bit unusual like saxophones that we’ve heard of recently. We still need people to love their vehicles, to remove valuables overnight.”