Carole DeSchover spotted her missing truck driving by as she was pulling into her parent’s driveway Sunday afternoon.
She called police and took off in pursuit in her rented red Kia.
She followed her truck, stolen two weeks earlier, for 10 minutes before Lloydminster RCMP joined the chase, she said on Monday.
With two police cruisers behind, the truck began to move erratically.
“They were running red lights and swerving in and out of traffic,” said DeSchover.
She decided to leave the chase to police, heading back into Lloydminster, a city on the Alberta–Saskatchewan border.
She couldn’t have known this was only the beginning of the chase which would end in gunfire and the death of a 27-year-old man.
Once she was close to town, she crossed paths with her truck a second time.
She watched as it drove toward a stopped police car.
“The truck rammed the cop car and came on the wrong side of the road, came into the eastbound lane straight at me,” she said, adding that she was able to see the driver and passenger, who were both wearing balaclavas.
After the truck narrowly missed her, she pulled over before deciding to head toward a girlfriend’s home near the highway.
As she reached the house, she again saw her truck, this time coming right at her.
“I was scared that I thought I was going to die by my own truck,” DeSchover said.
The truck passed her, narrowly missing her car, and headed back into the city.
She would learn the chase ended near where it started, two blocks from her house.
I was scared that I thought I was going to die by my own truck– Carole DeSchover
On Monday afternoon, the truck was still in the spot where it came to a crashing stop, the area taped off by police.
In a news release Sunday, RCMP would only say said officers stopped a suspected stolen vehicle around 1 p.m.
An altercation led one officer to fire a service pistol, before the vehicle drove off, police in pursuit.
An hour later, RCMP stopped the vehicle again in central Lloydminster which led to a second altercation.
The male driver was killed and a female passenger, uninjured, was taken into custody, police said.
The events have left DeSchover shaken.
“I keep thinking like if I hadn’t followed them if I hadn’t got the police on me you know maybe the outcome would have been different,” she said.
“Maybe they would have robbed and killed somebody else.”
The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team is investigating.