Police seize truck from Mission, BC, driver who hit residential school marchers

Mission RCMP announced Monday it interviewed a driver who allegedly hit several participants in a march for residential school survivors and seized his truck after some march organizers criticized the force for downplaying the incident.

Police now say the 77-year-old driver has come forward and is cooperating with the investigation. He’s not under arrest, but his truck has been taken by police for examination.

“This has been a traumatizing event for the people involved in March, as well as the wider community, and police are working hard to gather all of the evidence to help to bring some answers and some closure to everyone involved,” Const. Harrison Mohr said.

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Initially, the force said the pedestrians received “minor injuries” when the driver tried to pass the march. Two of them had to go to hospital for treatment.

The march was going along the highway on the way to the former St Mary’s Residential School around 12:30 pm on Saturday, June 4 when the incident occurred.

Journalist Robert Jago, who was covering the march for Canadaland, said the driver drove through the crowd.

“I was filming an altercation with another driver – who was angry that they were stopped as we entered the driveway to our reserve (at the site of the rebuilt St Mary’s residential school),” he told Daily Hive.

“The collision happened immediately behind me. My tweets are based on my conversations with more than a dozen witnesses.”

Re: the hate crime element of the attack in Mission. Besides the flags, the colour of the people in the crowd, all the orange, the drums, the singing, the racial slurs… note the location. At the entrance to a reserve. The Red Cross is where I took the video this pic is from. pic.twitter.com/nyc1qtcgG4

— Robert Jago (@rjjago) June 6, 2022