The tale of the arresting of Scott Creechan

Scott Creechan is a lovely fellow.  He stands at probably 6 foot and is as lanky as shoelace liquorice.  He is a gentle soul with little need for violence and zero experience with any sort of gang violence, street fighting and or encounters with police of any kind.

On September 15, 2010 Scott Creechan was arrested while in the presence of 6 police cars, one bomb squad vehicle, a swat team and 6 other very anxious Katimavik volunteers in downtown Thunder Bay.

I. KID. YOU. NOT.

All facts of this story are entirely true and for the sake of cutting to the chase and not souping things up I will cut to the chase and not soup things up.

Picture a scenic village, or if you've been here just picture Thunder Bay.  The city is split into what used to be two different townships - Port Arthur and Fort William.  Some time ago a very smart man said "Gee, why are we all being so stupid and having two municipalities when we could just have one big municipality?" and thus, Innercity (or, Intercity) was created which joined the two cities in cohabitation.  Innercity is basically a big strip full of big box store names and shopping destinations.  And a movie theatre.  (which we eventually visited for the viewing of Harry Potter the 7th part 1 on November the 20th.)

Keep this movie theatre in mind, for it plays a key role in this story.

Our group of 11 had been split up into groups or 3/4 for what our Project Coordinator informed us was a "photo scavenger hunt".  In fact it was and it fact I had good fun on this little excursion.  It was when I arrived home that I heard of the ultimate consequences of tampering with good fun.

Scott's group was in Inner city (my group at this time was already comfortably seated on a bus which would take us home) when the shenanigans went down.  I have heard this story so many times I feel like I was there and I can picture everything up until the arrest.  I will tell it like I have been told.

Three days before our photo scavenger hunt there had been a murder quite close to our house, just a mere block and a half away actually.  A week before that there had been a murder on the other side of town involving two young people of the Canadian-Indian variety.  Needless to say, the cops and the entire city were aware and probably on the lookout for more illegal business.

The movie theatre sits on the other side of a quaint little bridge on the edge of Innercity.  After coming out of Innercity mall Scott's group met up with the other group on the scavenger hunt and they began travelling together.  As he was crossing a lawn on the way to the bridge Scott Creechan found a beautiful piece of craftsmanship.  A plastic wonder for a young boy, if you please!  It was a toy gun, the type I am not so sure of but please know that it was enough of a gun to qualify for a real gun.  Scott jokingly swung the gun around on his finger as though he was a real gun-slinging old west chap and crossed the bridge with his friends on the way to the Movie Theatre (a destination on the map of scavenge).

On the other side of the bridge Mr. Creechan gave the gun one last shine on his possibly dirty jeans and tossed it onto the grass on the other side, not wishing to carry it with him on public transit.  The group had reached a gymnasium just on the other side of the movie theatre and got the correct information from inside.  Literally no more than 8 minutes after crossing the bridge with the toy gun Scott and pals were leaving the parking lot of the gymnasium when cop cars came from every direction, closely followed by a bomb squad car.  (at least, that is what we figure. It looked like a bomb squad car but it did not SAY it was a bomb squad car.. gotta keep the facts straight, oui.)

Innercity is of course in the middle of the city.  It was just after lunch hour.  There had been recent murders.  Thunder Bay has cops.  These somewhat obvious facts all lead to multiple cops being very quick to get to a common area.  Although no one really got a chance to talk with the cops what we figure is someone called in the "sighting" or another peace officer saw it and called it in.  At any rate, young Mr. Creechan was arrested.  I will continue.

Scott was told to "drop his weapon!" several times in what I'm sure was an assertive tone and was promptly put in handcuffs and stuffed into a waiting police car.  The rest of the group decided it would be a brilliant time to get on the phone to our Project Coordinator, Alexa, the lady who put us on this marvellous adventure and who was monitoring us for the day because... dun da da dunnn.. our project leader was out of town for the day!!! BRILLIANT!!

After some vigorous questions and yelling the police finally allowed Scott to explain himself and Alexa showed up after they had released him.  By this time there was only two officers and cars left because the rest of the lovely policemen had realized there was no need for them to be there as there was no immediate danger.  Scott was reduced to tears, quite understandably.

Upon arriving home my group found Alexa in the driveway taking our sick Sam to the doctor and as Scott was so shocked he was going with them.  We exchanged a few words and Alexa said she'd be back soon and we'd all talk.  Right, okay.  Normal enough.

We went inside and 7 people informed us that Scott had been arrested.  The fact that this event was matched with a SWAT team and a bomb squad made it ridiculously hard to believe it could be true.  In fact I made Jessie pinky swear she would do my chores for the next two weeks if they were telling lies.  Obviously, they weren't.  But I had a hard time believing it until I got home and I still have a hard time believing that our sweet little Scott Creechan would ever be arrested.

Hope that was a fun read.  Sorry it's taken so long to write down!
Petra