Just In Canada

When in November 2017, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) responded to reports of a car that had collided with a truck ,and ended up on a ditch, in Nisku, south of Edmonton, Alberta, they were met by a very strange scene ....

Strange Winter Scenes In Nisku, Canada

 ..... They found that the five people in the car (three adults and two younger females), were nearly all naked.

All five occupants of the car were arrested as police considered it a “purposeful collision”, although there was some confusion as to what the actual charges were, but the police believed from the car occupants behaviour that drugs or alcohol may have been a factor. However all five were taken to hospital for “various reasons," under police custody because at the time of the crash, the temperature was about -8 C in Nisku. So chilly willies then.

RCMP Cpl. Laurel Scott said at the time that the incident was “very bizarre” and the investigation was “convoluted” and still in its infancy. However the Leduc forces general investigation section, forensic identification section, criminal collision investigation team and the collision analyst were all working on the case. 

It took a couple of days but then details started to come out .... police detectives reported that a man, woman and a six-week-old baby from a Leduc County home, had been “forced into a vehicle against their will” at around 9:30 a.m. on Monday the 6th of November. The man, who was put in to the trunk, was able to escape and the woman and the baby managed to get away a short time later. A driver for LPH Industrials picked up all three in his truck from the side of the road, as they 'appeared in obvious distress and were not wearing any shoes', and it was this truck that the BMW SUV, being driven by the naked gang rammed after a brief chase.

Two of the five suspects initially arrested at the crash scene were teenage girls, and were released with no charges. The three adults remained in police custody. The two adults and child who were forced into the vehicle were not injured during the attempted abductions and their escapes. A passer-by, Dustin Horutko who works in the area, was on his way back from a trip shortly before 10 a.m. when he came across the scene on Township Road 510. He described the scene: "15 RCMP vehicles and naked people being arrested."

“There was a big commotion, cops everywhere. Car in the ditch and it looked like they were trying to get in the car, they were all surrounding it. All of a sudden, they got in the car — I think they ripped the doors off — then I saw bodies come flying out, and they looked like they were wearing really light clothing until they were closer to me, and I realized they were all naked. They [the police] ripped them out of the car, they threw them into the snow and had their knees on their backs. It looked like the girls were resisting arrest, so they were getting pretty aggressive”.

“They walked them straight back to the cop car naked. He tried opening the doors and he couldn’t get in the one side. Then he tried the other side but he still couldn’t get in, so she stood there for 30 seconds, no clothes on. Just a wild morning… It was just crazy. If I didn’t have the picture, no one would have believed me.”

Another witness, Derek Scott managing partner at LPH Industrial arrived minutes after the incident, after being alerted by his truck driver .... he confirmed that a man, his daughter and her six-week-old baby were still safe in the truck, and were alleging that they had escaped from an attempted kidnapping. They didn’t say much. “I think they were just happy to be OK, happy to not be in a car full of naked people anymore.”

Naked Canadians Walk Of Shame

He then watched the RCMP officers arrest the five car occupants. “The guy had to do the walk of shame in front of everybody, then two more women did the walk of shame in front of everybody… then the one lady was the last to be removed — she put up the biggest fight. It was a pretty wild fight. It took five people to get her out.” He said the suspects all had their hands cuffed behind their backs. “There was no covering.”

Mr Scott added that some of the officers at the scene were laughing right along with him. “It’s kind of a comical situation, you must admit,” said Scott. “After you put aside that the people are safe now, we have a car full of naked people in the ditch!… I laughed.”

The RCMP intimated that charges were pending against the three for kidnapping and resisting arrest in connection with crash and the three abductions. A 27-year-old man and two women, 35 and 30, are to appear Thursday in Leduc court on charges of kidnapping and resisting arrest. Additional charges were added later against the woman driver of the BMW, including impaired and dangerous driving and four counts of assault with a weapon — the weapon being a car. The three accused, who had been released from custody on a behaviour bond, cannot be identified due to a publication ban due to the fact that minors are involved.

A relative of the three adults (the father of the teen girls), who were charged but bailed on a $3,000 no-cash bond, said that they are the "salt of the earth" who had drunk some strange tea brought back from a trip to India or elsewhere abroad (one of the accused had travelled earlier in the year to Thailand and South Korea). 

However the relative had to admit that tests showed that "Nothing came back like illicit drugs, so they figure it may have been some type of herbal drug or something." He added that the three people who were forced from their homes are also family friends and aren't holding any grudges. He also believed the car rammed the truck, because the tea made those inside think the family had been abducted by the truck driver and not the other way around. "They were under the impression that they were saving that guy and the woman and the little girl."

Now normally that would have been the last we heard of this, as the press rarely follow up these stories, but I waited and eventually more came out .... the three kidnap victims were neighbours of their abductors, and they are all members of the same Jehovah's Witnesses church. In September 2018 the cases finally came court, when two women and one man each pleaded guilty in Leduc provincial court to the charges of unlawful confinement. One of the women, also pleaded guilty to dangerous driving.

Court documents show that the group claim that they thought it was Armageddon and wanted to save their neighbours, which is why they abducted them. They resisted the police because they believed the police were demons. They also showed super strength after being pepper sprayed and Tasered. Also, that all but one of them were naked because, with it being the end of the world, they didn't have time to get dressed.

It appears that the group had stayed in a house for 3 days, during which the group experimented with pseudo-medical techniques, including muscle testing and applied kinesiology, and that they barely ate or drank. One of the teens recalls hearing screaming and banging and seeing ashes in the air. So some of the five hid in a bedroom or a bathroom. 

"They did so because they believed that they were in danger, either from bad or wicked people outside or from demons," says the document. So they rushed off to find safety and to save the neighbouring family. "Four who were naked were changing but they had to leave right away because it was unsafe, so they left without clothes," the document says.

The only one dressed, the mother drove them all in a BMW SUV and was in such a rush that she drove through the families garage door. When the vehicle drove to the neighbours' home, it apparently bent a metal gate. There they forced their neighbours out of their house and into the snow covered driveway without their shoes. The woman and her baby were put in the back seat with the naked teen girls, who were under a blanket. The man was put in the trunk and ordered to chant "Jehovah" 10 times.

The group also chanted "Jehovah" as the SUV sped down roads and went through a red light on the way to nearby Nisku but the man escaped as the trunk didn't latch shut properly, when the vehicle slowed. His daughter, after getting her hand slammed in the door of the SUV, was able to get out with her baby. They then ran for help.

When Mounties arrived, the group continued to chant "Jehovah" and refused to get out, at times clinging to the vehicle and each other. One of the teens believed the police "were monsters who would kill them." RCMP officers said the people in the SUV "displayed extreme strength." Two were unaffected by pepper spray. The three adults were also shot with Tasers between two and four times before they stopped resisting, although one then slid under the vehicle and had to be dragged out with a strap.

On December 20th 2018, the court heard that the three people involved all suffered from a rare, shared psychotic disorder, and were not affected by alcohol or drugs (or foreign tea!). The group of five experienced a shared psychosis as a result of days of malnutrition and dehydration, as well as religious influence.

The Crown, and defence lawyer jointly recommended no jail time for the charges. Crown prosecutor Katrina Stewart Lund called the events “strange and bizarre from the beginning” for which “a full explanation may never be known.” The defence team told court their clients had shown remorse for their actions. According to her lawyer, one of the convicted women said, “I hope one day I can say sorry to them.”

The court agreed and the adults were given a one-year sentence in the community. For the first six months, they will be under house arrest, only allowed to leave for counselling and four hours per week for religious meetings. In the following six months, they will be subject to a curfew. Among other conditions, the adults were also ordered to receive psychiatric care. All three are not allowed to contact the victims. The year-long sentence will be followed by two years of probation.

And there endeth the very strange lesson of the naked kidnappers.