Victim: suspect was bloody

Photo: Contributed

The crashed motorcycle that a carjacking suspect stood beside while flagging down drivers on Thursday afternoon.

The victim of an Eastside Road carjacking on Thursday afternoon in Penticton described the harrowing moment when a man pulled a gun and pointed it at his face, demanding his vehicle.

Castanet spoke to Robert (not his real name), who described driving south toward Okanagan Falls when the incident occurred. 

He was going around a bend when he saw two vehicles stopped and a motorcycle crashed on the side of the road, with people waving their arms hailing him down.

"So I stopped, had my window down, and the guy was at the window of the car in front of me," Robert said. 

Suddenly, that car sped off, and the man ran towards Robert's car yelling "Help!" at first. 

"As he got closer to my car he pulled his gun out and shoved it in my face," Robert described, adding the man had blood on his face and arms. "He said 'Give me your effing car, or I'll blow your effing head off'...I said here, take it!"

The car, which is his work vehicle, was full of "only stuff," and not worth fighting over. He called 911 immediately after the carjacker sped off, and RCMP were quickly on scene. 

RCMP at the scene told Robert that the car in front of him which had sped away held a woman with two small children, and that she had pressed the gas in panic when confronted. 

Robert's vehicle, a 2017 Rav4, was towed away from the parking lot of the Penticton Golf and Country Club at around 10:45 a.m. Friday. He said police phoned him to tell him it had been recovered. 

"They're going to go through it, looking for evidence," he said. 

Police have so far been silent on the incident save for an initial press release Thursday afternoon. 

The motorcycle crashed at the scene was subsequently towed away by police, and it matches the description of a motorcycle reported stolen on social media Thursday.