A screenshot of someone slashing a tire at a home in the East Hill area earlier this week. (Submitted Photo)

By Susan McNeil

Shooting threat

Retiree worried after dropped cup leads to shooting threat

Jun 29, 2023 | 5:00 PM

A retiree living in the East Hill area of Prince Albert is worried for his safety after two incidents that saw the same group of teens return to his house and stab his van tires and later threaten to have their grandmother shoot him.

The man, who does not want to be named, said it all started earlier this week when one teen dropped a disposable plastic cup on his driveway and he asked him to pick it up.

“I said hey, why don’t you come back here and pick the garbage up? So, he came back, and he picked up and left. So, he went down the street a little way and threw it on the ground again,” he said.

Another teen who had been going up and down the street looking for lawn mower jobs was also in the vicinity with the original youth.

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The man and his wife then got in their vehicle to go to an appointment, at which point the two teens started yelling at them.

He stopped to ask them what was wrong and what they were saying, a decision he regrets as three more youths had joined the first two.

“I should never have stopped because once you get people like that in a group of five, they think they’re invincible and they can do whatever they want,” he said.

He asked his wife to start recording the incident with her phone but then one person who had not been involved, went around to the side of the vehicle and spat in her face.

The man told the teen he was going to do a citizen’s arrest for assault.

“He freaked out and took off and his buddies all took off. The kid with the lawnmower pushed it in front of the truck and he starts hollering at me about feeling unsafe,” he stated.

He followed them to their house and got the address and called the police to report the incident.

Later that day, he saw three of the teens return to the area, hiding behind a nearby tree in a churchyard. They ran when they saw him but he then saw debris on his vehicle.

The man has security cameras that record both audio and images, so he reviewed the footage and figured out the teens had gone to the nearby King George School, grabbed some shavings from the playground and threw them on the truck.

“I didn’t notice anything else, but I called the police again. I walked outside and looked at the side of my wife’s van and the right rear tire was flat,” he said.

He assumed at that point they had come back only one time, but when he reviewed further, found a second visit that shows one of the culprits stabbing the tire.

He drove back to the house where the culprits were and called the police again while making sure he had the address correct.

“Number one and number two were both there. Number one informs me that my granny has a 422 and she’ll use it on you,” the man said.

He didn’t know what a 422 was but assumed it was a weapon of some sort. A 422 is a semi-automatic, .22 calibre Smith and Wesson pistol that ended production in 1996.

The second person then yelled out something about a knife and it being ready to be used.

“I realize now that this kid, by his own admission and by the video evidence, has a knife and carries it and is willing to use it to commit acts of violence,” the man said.

To be on guard, he is keeping an eye on all activity on the street. Even as paNOW was at the location, there was a person hiding behind the same tree.

The man said in his decades of living at the same address, he had never seen people hiding behind the tree and the girl had been there off and on for two days.

Police had not returned requests for an update on any potential criminal investigation prior to publication.

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com