Year in Review: Amber Alert shocks community, brings widespread relief as girl found safe

Investigators alerted gas stations across Western Canada to be on the lookout. Highly trained investigators were deployed to the area as a helicopter from Alberta and a plan from Saskatchewan were on standby in the event a search location was identified.

Hundreds of residents took to the streets that night and into the early morning hours in an attempt to locate the vehicle and missing girl.

Battleford Central School principal Monique Sommerfeld, who knew the family involved, said hundreds took part in the search and used the school as a muster point.

“There were so many people who were out looking and we wanted to have one spot to coordinate our efforts,” she told battlefordsNOW. “Before we knew it, we came back to school at 10 p.m. and there were hundreds of people here. There were people still coming at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning.”

Others said it wasn’t much of an exaggeration that “every street corner, every street, every back alley” had cars going up and down during the search throughout the night.

To everyone’s relief, the girl was found at approximately 6:45 a.m. the following morning in the vehicle, which was abandoned in the bushes in the North Battleford Industrial Park.

Following the situation, much discussion resulted about what an emergency of that nature entails, with some questioning why an alert was issued in this case and not for others.

Amber Alert emergency messages are activated in high-risk situations. Saskatchewan RCMP Cpl. Rob King talked to battlefordsNOW about what factors must be met in an Amber Alert situation.

“One of the criteria that you need to have for an Amber Alert is you need to have a person that is vulnerable, usually a child, that has gone missing,” he said. “You need to have either a subject description, or a subject’s name, or in this case, we had a vehicle that was identifiable, and we had a place of departure. Given the at-risk nature of the victim, and that we had a definite vehicle we knew would be with the victim at the time, it qualified for the Amber Alert.”

King said each situation focuses on the facts, not what race the victim is or who they are.

In the days to follow, a suspect, 19-year-old Johnathan Ryan Gunville of North Battlefords was identified and arrested after authorities combed through hundreds of hours of surveillance footage from over 200 businesses.

He faced several charges including abduction, unlawful confinement, abandoning a child, dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, theft of a motor vehicle, possession of property obtained by crime over $5,000, evading police, driving while disqualified and failing to comply with a probation order.

During his early court appearances for a bail hearing, defence lawyer Bill Archer said Gunville resided at The Lighthouse prior to his arrest. In his opinion, if in fact, it was his client involved in the case, Gunville wouldn’t have been aware there was a child in the back seat of the vehicle and pointed to his client’s cognitive challenges.

“I want to make it perfectly clear, Johnny is not an evil monster,” he said. “He is a troubled kid, intellectually-challenged. In some respect, you can characterize the case as there were two kids in that car. One was driving and ought not to have been driving. One was in the car seat. Both of them have intellectual challenges.”

In October, Gunville entered guilty pleas to charges of abandoning a child, theft of a vehicle, operation of a vehicle dangerous to the public, and driving while disqualified.

Other charges, including abduction and unlawful confinement, are expected to be discussed when the case comes back to court January 9.

tyler.marr@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @JournoMar

by Tyler Marr

Year in Review: Amber Alert shocks community, brings widespread relief as girl found safe

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