Cody Berggren, co-owner of Alberta Nurseries and Seeds, said accused fugitive Dillon Bristow was ultimately found lying on a shelf with a pillow nearby in his company's mail order processing centre adjacent to the business's main building.
When Berggren was allowed back into the nursery at about 1:30 a.m., he discovered the suspect attempted to climb into the drop ceiling in a bathroom in the facility's main building but ended up falling through the tiles. Berggren said police told him the suspect was injured in the fall.
“Unfortunately for him, he fell through and I think he hurt himself really bad,” he said. There were no signs, however, that the suspect had tried to steal anything from the business.
“It was quite surprising, I thought he might have rifled through the place maybe looking for some sets of keys for some of the vehicles that were around here,” Berggren said.
It's believed the accused had entered the building through a door in the nursery's garden centre that had inadvertently been left unlocked when the nursery's staff went home for the evening.
As well, the suspect locked the door behind him but set off a silent alarm, said Berggren. It was just after 6 p.m., at about the same time Berggren noticed a police helicopter over the town, when the alarm company called him to say the alarm had been set off.
“With what's been happening this week, I told them to get hold of the RCMP to come look at it,” Berggren said.
He set off for the nursery and met police near the site and informed them of the alarm at the business and then returned to his home in Bowden.
Throughout the evening, as it became clear the suspect was somewhere on the nursery grounds, various police members called Berggren for information about the layout of the buildings on the property.
He said when police were ready to move in, he was called to the RCMP command centre near the junction of highways 2 and 587 to provide more details about the layout of the nursery's main building. Police rammed down the front door of the building in order to track down the suspect inside.
It was at the command centre, shortly after midnight, that Berggren received word Bristow was arrested.
“It was great to see that things were resolved safely, that the suspect wasn't harmed and that no law enforcement agencies were affected as well,” he said. “It's a big relief for the community.”
But the hours when police were still looking for the suspect were “disconcerting,” Berggren said. “We're from small towns and we like to think our small towns are safe and free of some of the other incidences that happen around but it just shows that you always have to be on your guard a little bit. I was just glad that it happened at an after-hours time when there was no staff around.”
He added he did think of the “worst-case scenario”, where if the suspect wasn't found or police did not believe he was on the nursery site, he could have been inside when staff showed up the next morning.
“It was a tough night.” Berggren said he commends police for their actions during the manhunt. He added he knew the father of the suspect and he hopes the suspect will now receive the help he needs.
