Two Ottawa men's decision to chase a car through residential roads at speeds exceeding 170 km/h to catch a suspected rapist has sparked a debate as to how far citizens should go when trying to help police.
Ryan O'Connor and his roommate, Matt Spezza, brother of Ottawa Senators star Jason Spezza, were driving to a Kim Mitchell concert around 11 p.m. Friday when they realized they forgot their tickets at home.
O'Connor, 33, turned his 2008 Porsche 997 around and they began heading back. As they drove down a deserted rural road, a woman jumped in front of the car.
"I hit the brakes. We were lucky we didn't hit her," said O'Connor. "She was screaming and crying, just hysterical. She pointed at this car and said, `That guy in the car tried to kill me.'"
The woman, holding a cell phone with a 911 dispatcher on the other end, said the attacker had given her a lift but then pulled over and demanded sexual favours.
The men then watched the alleged attacker take off in a blue Pontiac Wave.
Spezza told the distressed woman to get into back of the Porsche. Meanwhile, O'Connor grabbed her phone and spoke with the dispatcher as he chased the suspect's car.
Despite the two cars reaching speeds of over 170 km/h, the dispatcher didn't tell the men to stop the pursuit, confirmed Ottawa Police Chief Vern White.
"Our operator did not do what he should have done .... Thank God nothing happened," he said.
White said the department has no policy on citizen pursuits, adding that common sense should always prevail.
"If this had been a police pursuit, we would have stopped it. You don't do that with a victim in the back seat," he said.
The chase lasted about 20 minutes, O'Connor said, and took the two cars through several residential roads and parking lots. After driving the wrong way through a McDonald's drive-thru, the suspect turned onto Hwy. 416, where a police barricade stopped him.
Canadian media outlets and blogs are abuzz with the story, with some hailing the men as heroes while others are denouncing them as reckless cowboys.
"When they put her in the back of the car, that was heroism," White said. "What happened after wasn't."
He said Spezza or O'Connor won't be charged because they were under police supervision at the time.
In Toronto, police dispatchers have a policy to "discourage" a citizen from doing anything dangerous when pursuing a potential criminal - be it following someone with a gun or chasing a car at high-speeds, said Supt. Mark Fenton.
"When trying to apprehend somebody at those speeds, you could easily lose control and kill somebody totally innocent," he said.
Despite the criticism, O'Connor said he is happy he and Spezza did what they did.
"There's two sides to every story. I can see their point: We're very lucky we didn't have a head-on (collision). But if we did nothing, people would have said, `you should have followed him.' It's lose-lose," he said.
100MPH chase of suspected rapist... in a 997 911
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