A man running from an alleged knife-wielding attacker in British Columbia found an unusual escape route: a stranger’s Tesla moving backward through a park.
Surrey Police Service said officers were called to Redwood Park around 4:45 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 9, after a reported assault. The victim tried to leave in his Ford pickup, but police allege the other man drove a Jeep Wrangler into the truck.
The victim abandoned the pickup and ran. Police say the suspect brandished a knife and chased him until a nearby driver provided somewhere safer to go.
That driver was photographer Robin Nuber, whose intervention became part of a video that spread rapidly across social media. By Thursday, police had arrested 37-year-old Richard Mark James Evoy and prosecutors had approved five charges against him.
A Moving Door
CP24 reported that Nuber captured part of the encounter on video. The footage shows an altercation around a white pickup before a man holding a knife climbs onto the truck, jumps down, and begins chasing another man.
Nuber was behind the wheel of the Tesla.
As the fleeing man reached his vehicle, Nuber opened a door and reversed away from the approaching suspect. The man initially hung onto the outside of the Tesla as it moved backward before Nuber stopped long enough to get him inside.
Nuber wrote on Instagram that the victim had suffered injuries to his eye and mouth as well as cuts. He also said the pursuing man eventually stopped, discarded the knife in some bushes, and sat down while they waited for police.
Surrey Police’s account independently establishes the essential sequence surrounding the escape. The department said a nearby witness driving a Tesla gave the victim safety until officers arrived.
Police took the suspect into custody without further incident.
After The Chase
Evoy has been charged with assault with a weapon, assault, possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose, criminal harassment, and uttering threats.
The charges are allegations and have not been proven in court.
Surrey Police said Thursday that Evoy had been remanded in custody and was scheduled to appear in Surrey Provincial Court that afternoon.
The viral footage has also produced plenty of theories about what caused the confrontation, including claims that jealousy or a former relationship was involved. Neither the police account nor the reporting available to Guessing Headlights establishes those claims.
What the supported record does establish is considerably simpler: a pickup was rammed, its driver fled on foot with a man allegedly chasing him with a knife, and a stranger in a Tesla gave him a moving place to escape.