A 23-year-old man is facing several charges after being arrested in a stolen truck at the Wembley Mall parking lot in Parksville on Thursday morning.
Around 9:20 a.m., Oceanside RCMP received a call about a man who had fallen over in the driver’s seat of a pickup truck at the mall.
When officers arrived, they found the man, along with a female passenger, in a 2016 Ford F150.
Upon further investigation, it was determined that the truck had been stolen earlier in the week from an underground parking garage in downtown Parksville.
The man, identified as 23-year-old Gage Lindberg-Larsen, was found to be in possession of knives, suspected drugs, and various other stolen property believed to have been taken during the earlier break-in.
Both Lindberg-Larsen and the female passenger were arrested at the scene.
Lindberg-Larsen has since appeared in court and faces multiple charges, including two counts of possession of stolen property, one count of possession of stolen identification, and two counts of breach of probation.
He remains in custody.
The female passenger, a 36-year-old Oceanside resident, is not facing charges related to the stolen truck but is being held in custody on an unrelated arrest warrant.
She appeared in court on Friday morning.
“It has been an unusually busy week with stolen trucks in the Oceanside area,” says Sergeant Shane Worth of the Oceanside RCMP.
“Three pickup trucks were reported stolen and fortunately all have been recovered and one suspect was arrested thanks to alert citizens reporting suspicious activity to the police.”
According to a media release, this incident comes amid an unusually busy week for stolen truck cases in the Oceanside area.
Two other pickups were reported stolen this week—one from Coombs and the other near Cameron Lake.
Fortunately, both trucks have been recovered—the Coombs truck was found close to where it was taken, and the Cameron Lake truck was located on a property in Whiskey Creek.
No arrests have been made in connection with these two thefts, and the investigation is ongoing.
