Follow up on OPP Shibley Road search

Jeff Green | Apr 19, 2012

Police are being tight lipped about the circumstances that led them to start and then abruptly end a manhunt on Shibley Road near Sharbot Lake last Wednesday, April 11.

The large scale search included officers from the Lanark County detachment, the canine unit, the Emergency Response Team, the Tactics and Rescue Unit and the OPP Helicopter, who were reported to be searching for two white males, approximately fifty years old, with greying hair and dark clothing, after the theft of a motor vehicle from a residence.

“The suspects should be considered armed and dangerous and should not be approached,” according to an OPP communiqué that came out late on Wednesday morning.

Later that afternoon, in a follow up commuiqué, the tone had changed.

In announcing that the search had been called off, the OPP spokesperson David Bird said, “The investigation has revealed that there is no longer any specific threat to public safety in the community”, and that the investigation had been taken over by the crime unit of the Lanark detachment.

When contacted later, Constable Bird would not say whether the two men had ever been located, but he did say that no charges had been laid and the investigation was ongoing.

The News contacted a number of people who live on the Shibley Road, who raised doubts as to the existence of the alleged perpetrators.

Residents of Shibley Road told the News that the vehicle was found, badly damaged, in a ditch facing Road 38, a number of kilometres down Shibley Road near Powell Crescent. A boy of 15 or 16 came to a house on Powell Road, and said there had been an accident, and then he claimed that the vehicle had been stolen by one or two armed perpetrators.

A 911 call went out and soon after that the manhunt was initiated.

OPP spokesperson David Bird said that more information would be forthcoming once the investigation has been completed.