Manitoba Mounties always get their man… even if he’s hiding under a trap door, in a secret room, behind a bookcase
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Cpl. Barry Kirby and the other RCMP officers who went to arrest a suspected thief at a house in Dauphin early Saturday had never seen anything like it.
The Mounties uncovered not one, but two hidden rooms concealed inside the residence on Hawthorne Avenue.
When the officers went inside the house shortly before 12:30 a.m., they initially found a man who claimed he was alone, but a search revealed a hidden room behind bookcase in front of a false wall.
“That is something, personally, myself, nor any of the other members there, had ever seen before,” said Kirby, a 14-year member of the RCMP who works in the Manitoba west district general investigative section.
“(It was) very unusual… you can find people hiding in random spots in a residence, but certainly never something constructed like that.”
Kirby said the false wall was built well enough that it was not immediately noticeable.
“We had fairly reasonable grounds to believe the male was inside the residence, so, at first, you don’t find him, so you think, ‘OK,’ and start looking, thinking outside the box a bit, and that’s when somebody looked at this bookshelf and noticed it looked a bit off,” said Kirby.
“It was certainly a unique situation that none of us on scene had ever seen before.”
Inside the hidden room, officers found weapons — including an air pistol, a large knife, a retractable baton and bear spray — and a trap door leading to a second concealed space.
After about 20 minutes, a second suspect inside the room under the trap door surrendered and officers took him into custody.
Kirby said he couldn’t say why, exactly, the rooms appear to have been built.
Jayson McDougall, 48, of Dauphin, is charged with resisting arrest and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose. He was already facing several charges, including theft over $5,000, possession of stolen property and fleeing police. He remains in custody.
A second man, 35, was arrested at the scene and charged with obstructing police. He was later released with a court date.
fpcity@freepress.mb.ca