Mother hit and killed by U-Haul was executive director of Fort Saskatchewan Food Bank

The 45-year-old woman who was struck and killed by a suspect driving a U-Haul cube van Saturday night in southeast Edmonton was the executive director of the food bank in Fort Saskatchewan, Alta.

Kassandra Gartner was a mother of three daughters and a resident of the city northeast of Edmonton. A vigil is being planned for Thursday night in Fort Saskatchewan.

Gartner was one of several civilians caught up in a high-speed police chase that involved several stolen vehicles and multiple municipalities.

It started in Beaumont, south of Edmonton, at around 9 p.m. when RCMP officers tried to pull over a U-Haul truck they had deemed suspicious.

But the U-Haul — with a male driver and female passenger inside — rammed the RCMP vehicle and sped away, RCMP said.

The Edmonton Police Service, including its Air One Helicopter, and Leduc and Strathcona RCMP detachments, responded to help.

As the U-Haul truck was driving north into Edmonton, a tire-deflation device (spike belt) was deployed by RCMP, which also disabled three civilian vehicles.

Gartner was in one of them. She got out to inspect her vehicle and was fatally hit by the U-Haul as it drove north on 50th Street, police said. The suspect driver did not stop and kept heading into Edmonton.

“The suspect vehicle then collided with another civilian vehicle, leaving an adult male in serious non-life-threatening condition,” police said.

Security expert Neil LeMay said spike belts are often used very successfully by law enforcement to stop criminal pursuits.

“The, probably, go-to tool for the police to end a pursuit is the spike belt,” he said.

LeMay said police forces have rules around when and how to use the tool.

“It’s very unfortunate that this person was killed, but I think we have to keep in mind that it was the suspect that killed this person — not the police.”

Edmonton police say the suspect vehicle then stopped outside a 7/11 convenience store and gas station off 22nd Avenue and 50th Street, before someone in the U-Haul stole a Honda Civic car that was parked outside the gas station. Police said the car had a child inside.

Moments later, the child was found unharmed at 66th Street and 25th Avenue. The suspect then fled the scene in the Honda Civic, police said.

The stolen car was recovered by police Monday morning near Wainwright, Alta., police said.

“This is a horrible, horrible thing to have happen,” LeMay said, adding he’s thinking of the victims’ families.

He said police forces across North America struggle with high-speed pursuits and how to “de-risk” them.

“When I left policing there was a very stringent procedure and protocol around the initiation around high-speed pursuits or any type of pursuit that might turn into a high-speed pursuit.”

LeMay says police consider multiple factors like the time of day, road and traffic conditions, weather, the number of pedestrians around, the  experience of the police officers, and if there are other passengers in the suspect vehicle and who those people are.

“All this information has to be analyzed and a decision made within seconds because this is unfolding at 140, 160 kilometres an hour.”

He says, most of the time, high-risk pursuits are called off because the risk to the public is too great.

“If that child had been harmed in some way, I’m sure there would be critics coming out saying: ‘Police should have done more to stop him before he got there.’ So police are in a constant Catch-22,” LeMay said.

“Their duty is to apprehend criminals. Their duty is to maintain public safety. At times, there’s a real tug of war between the two that we train our police officers to handle, to de-risk as best they can in situations that are over in sometimes less than 10 minutes, sometimes less than two or three minutes.”

The suspect has not yet been caught.

He is described as five feet 11 inches and was last seen wearing a black hoodie with white text on the front. He was also wearing brown shorts and black shoes.

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