Man accused of shooting at Sabal Pipeline in Dunnellon was fatally shot during a high-speed chase that ended in Floral City early Sunday morning. Photo Credit: Citrus County Sheriff’s Department
James Leroy Marker killed by Law Enforcement after shooting at Sabal Trail Pipeline
By Black Powder | RPM Staff, Feb 26, 2017 • Updated: Feb 27, 2017
Law Enforcement officials have released the name of a suspect killed by officers Sunday, following a chase that began in Marion County and ended in Citrus County, Florida.
WFTV reports, the accused shooter left the area, and a pursuit began into Citrus County on Highway 200. Citrus County deputies, Marion County deputies and troopers with the Florida Highway Patrol were involved in the pursuit, deputies said.
The multi-county high-speed pursuit ended when a Trooper completed a “precision immobilization technique” bringing the suspect’s vehicle to a stop on the shoulder of the road, according to cflwire.com.
Police say at that time, the man pointed the weapon at a Citrus County Sheriff’s deputy. The deputies and troopers returned fire striking the suspect.
Dawson Creek RCMP await the arrival of IIO investigators outside the Fixx Urban Grill restaurant, where a man was shot dead by police Thursday night outside a Site C open house. Police held the scene while members of the independent police investigations office flew in from Vancouver.
RCMP shot and killed a masked man outside a restaurant in Dawson Creek last night.
Investigators from the Independent Investigations Office (IIO) boarded a flight from Vancouver this morning to Fort St. John and were expected to be in Dawson Creek around 11 a.m.
The shooting took place outside the Fixx Urban Grill restaurant at the Stonebridge Hotel on Highway 2 near the outskirts of the city. RCMP were called to the restaurant around 6:30 p.m. last night to reports of a man disrupting and damaging property at a BC Hydro open house on the Site C dam project.
Hydro had been holding the open house in the banquet facilities of the restaurant to update the public on construction timelines for the $8.8-billion hydro dam on the Peace River.
The IIO says police arrived on scene and encountered a man wearing a mask outside the restaurant, and believed him to be connected to the complaint. At some point, a confrontation occurred and police shot the masked man. He was taken to hospital where he later died of his wounds, according to the IIO.
No officers or other civilians were injured, IIO spokeswoman Kellie Kilpatrick told the Alaska Highway News.
The office says it will not be commenting on any of the officers involved in the shooting, or releasing details on the identity of the dead man, or where he was shot.
Police are not saying specifically whether this was the same man escorted out of the Hydro event, and have not said what kind of mask the man was wearing. It remains unclear if the man was armed with a weapon, and what attempts, if any, he had made toward officers.
Guy Fawkes mask
A man waiting in the parking an hour after the shooting said another man showed him a cell phone video taken of the body. He had never met the man before, and did not know his name.
“He had a video he showed me, and he zoomed in to see what mask it was. [The man who took the video] didn’t know that it was called a Guy Fawkes mask,” said the man.
The mask, popularized by the 2005 film V for Vendetta, has become a symbol in certain protest movements.
The man who saw the video said he did not want his name used, saying he was new to the area and that his employment prospects could be impacted. This account has not been confirmed by police.
A cell phone video has surfaced which shows police shooting a man outside the Fixx Urban Grill.
WATCH: Witness captures Dawson Creek RCMP shooting on cellphone. Warning: Contains disturbing content and graphic language.
Curtis Pratt was attending the open house and saw the man disrupting the event.
“He was flipping over the tables, and he walked around and started knocking the posters off, they had them on the stands and he was knocking them off. Then he went back and started tearing up the pictures and the maps,” Pratt said.
“I never saw anyone escort him out [of the building.] They just ushered him out through the door there and they were in another part of the building so we never saw after that what was going on. It seemed like everything was fine.”
Open house in Fort St. John also disrupted by protesters
Hydro has not yet released a statement on the shooting.
It had been holding open houses across the Peace Region over the last two weeks on its construction timelines for the project, which received the provincial green light to proceed last December. Shovels are expected to hit the ground on site preparation work any day now.
A small band of a dozen Treaty 8 First Nation members interrupted an open house in Fort St. John on July 9.
A video posted to YouTube shows local musician Garry Oker leading a drum procession. before making a short speech about a number of legal challenges in BC Supreme Court and federal court over the dam’s construction.
“I just want to let you know that we still got legal cases that we need to address,” Oker told the crowd.
“So, Site C, this is premature to our legal right to have a hearing in courts. We don’t have whole consent of Treaty 8 people.”
Oker later continued: “This is our sacred land. There’s something not right here. We need an opportunity to be able to have a court hearing and after that we can be able to abide by the law. But, right now, this type of thing is not right, it doesn’t feel right. It’s not right to be able to push that kind of stuff on our people.”
An 18-year-old who pinned himself under a Kinder Morgan jeep in late October also got himself into difficulties with the law last Thursday.
Jakub Markiewicz was pulled down from a tree by RCMP, and four officers lifted him and carried him to the bottom of the hill, said eyewitness Christie Spry.
“He kept struggling. They had to stop every 15 feet or so. Eventually, they put him on a stretcher,” she said.
At 18, Markiewicz is the youngest member of the group that has come to be known at the Caretakers of Burnaby Mountain, a core group of people who have been keeping watch over the mountain since Kinder Morgan arrived in the conservation area with chainsaws to begin survey work.
RCMP currently going up to the tree sit. Photo: Burnaby Mountain Updates\Facebook
From his perch 10 metres up a tree, the lone protester held the last vigil on Burnaby Mountain, alternately taunting police and asking them not to Taser him because he’d fall out and hurt himself.
For hours, Jakub Markiewicz held not only the police at bay but also survey workers from Kinder Morgan, who want to puncture the mountain’s tough skin to find out if they can bore a new oil pipeline through it.
In the clearing where Markiewicz sat high above the ground, at ground zero where Kinder Morgan wants to work, police were stumped at how to get him down. Emboldened because the standoff was being live-streamed by a member of conservation society Sea Shepherd Vancouver, he defied their orders, and later their entreaties, to come down peaceably.
“There’s only 18 officers here. Double that number and come out,” Markiewicz shouted at the videographer, imploring activists online to rally at the mountain. “Triple that number and come out.”
At one point Markiewicz shouted down to police that he wasn’t harnessed to the tree, so if they used a Taser or a bean bag shotgun he would likely be hurt, falling out of the tree. But police didn’t appear to consider that option anyway.
Mounties patiently expanded the cordon so that the public theatre of live streaming couldn’t take place anymore and then scaled the tree. Two officers with bolt cutters joined Markiewicz and removed a chain he’d used to fix his neck to the trunk.
His arrest was perhaps the most elaborate of more than two dozen that punctuated a day of high drama on the mountain. What began at around 8 a.m. with a small force of officers moving in stretched into an ugly and tense standoff fuelled by social media calls for people to “defend the mountain.”
Police arrested anyone who stood their ground in defiance of the injunction. When by 9:30 a.m. five had been taken away, others retreated to an area outside of the taped-off camp. Wiping away tears, protester Emily Cook said a friend, whom she did not identify, was arrested outside of the injunction zone just as he was telling an officer he didn’t want to be arrested.
“They did not give him the option. They gave him no warning he would be arrested. They put him in zap straps,” she said.
Video: A lone protester in forest canopy on Burnaby Mountain delivered to police vehicle past protesting crowds.
Burnaby Mountain on November 20, 2014. Photo: JACKIE DIVES
Burnaby Mountain on November 20, 2014. Photo: JACKIE DIVES
Burnaby Mountain on November 20, 2014. JACKIE DIVES
Burnaby Mountain on November 20, 2014. JACKIE DIVES
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