In what may have been the most Canadian chase scene ever, members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police last week took off after a suspect not on their equines, but rather on a borrowed snowmobile. The man they were chasing: A thief who made his getaway on board a giant John Deere tractor.
Last Thursday, Mounties got a call about stolen firearms in a rural part of Alberta, followed by another call less than two hours later about a John Deere 6400 tractor — complete with front-loading bucket — getting swiped from another property in the same area. A quick-thinking officer investigating the tips flagged down a snowmobiler and asked to borrow his recreational vehicle to give chase. After following the tractor's tracks through fields and woods for a little while, the officer finally caught up to the machine as it lumbered along doing about 15 miles-per-hour.
"It was very slow, there wasn't any speed to this incident," RCMP Corporal Barry Larocque told the Calgary Sun.
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As the officer tried to approach and apprehend the tractor driver, later identified as Jesse Cecka, the suspect tumbled the machine down a hill. Cecka was not injured and was charged with breaking and entering and theft, among other things. Presumably, he was not also issued a ticket for speeding.
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