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Yellowknife man convicted of using vehicle as weapon against Mountie

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Brendan Burke/NNSL photo. Garry Taylor's dramatic encounter with an undercover RCMP officer unfolded outside of Crestview Manor Apartments, located on 52 Avenue. He's expected to be sentenced later this month for assaulting a peace officer with a vehicle. Oct. 1, 2019.

Outside a downtown apartment complex last winter, an undercover RCMP officer came face to face with the man he and his team had been searching for. Garry Taylor, the subject of a widening manhunt, was sitting behind the wheel of a car. He was driving straight towards the plainclothes officer.

What happened next, wrote Judge Donovan Molloy in a recently released decision on the case of the 39-year-old Yellowknife man – wanted at the time on warrants – played out like a page from a Hollywood film.

“The scene, although dramatic, was not part of a movie," wrote the NWT territorial judge. 

After the vehicle appeared to speed up outside Crestview Manor apartment building, the officer pulled out his gun and pointed it at the car. A woman, who had picked up Taylor at the 52 Avenue apartment complex, was sitting in the passenger’s seat. 

With nowhere to go, the Mountie was forced to jump on the hood of the vehicle, where he used his firearm to hammer at the windshield – eventually shattering it – while yelling that he was a police officer. Taylor starting swerving the vehicle in a bid to throw him off. The Mountie dropped his gun and tried to hold onto to the car’s windshield wipers before falling off.

Taylor escaped and the officer was not seriously injured. 

Brendan Burke/NNSL photo
Garry Taylor's dramatic encounter with an undercover RCMP officer unfolded outside of Crestview Manor Apartments, located on 52 Avenue. He's expected to be sentenced later this month for assaulting a peace officer with a vehicle.

On Sept. 13, Taylor was convicted after trial of assaulting a peace officer with a weapon – the vehicle – dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, operating a vehicle while disqualified and failing to comply with recognizance conditions in relation to the Jan. 21 incident. 

Taylor still faces a number of charges for offences allegedly committed before and after weaponizing the car against the officer.

On Jan. 18, two days prior to the assault, he’s alleged to have evaded authorities – an incident which intensified the manhunt and “amplified officer safety concerns,” stated Molloy. 

On Jan. 23, Taylor was arrested, bringing an end to the search. At the time, Yellowknife RCMP alleged Taylor had rammed his vehicle into a police car in an effort to get away. 

The charges stemming from those incidents are still before the courts. 

Taylor, along with the undercover officer involved in the January incident, testified at trial. Taylor said he didn’t know the Mountie was a police officer. He said he thought he was being carjacked by a robber, and that he didn’t hear the undercover Mountie identify himself – an account that was ultimately rejected by Molloy. 

Molloy said Taylor would have known full well that RCMP were actively searching for him, and that he sped off to escape custody. 

Taylor’s lawyer, Stephanie Whitecloud-Brass, focused on several omissions in the officer’s notes following the incident, including the fact that there was a female passenger in the vehicle. 

While Molloy said the omissions weren’t on par with RCMP standards, he accepted the officer’s testimony as it was made while he was still in a “high charged state,” after nearly being run over. 

Taylor will be back in court on Oct. 18 for a sentencing hearing. At the same appearance, he’s expected to enter pleas to over a dozen other charges stemming from separate incidents.