RCMP dive team hauls another stolen car out of Grand Lake
A white Mazda reported stolen from the Minto area was pulled from Douglas Harbour on Monday morning, RCMP say.
Police don't believe anyone was in the car when it went into the harbour in an area of Grand Lake where three or four other stolen vehicles have met a similar fate, according to Cpl. Matt Hansen.
RCMP received the report of a stolen car at 11:30 a.m. Sunday. Another call came in later that day reporting a car submerged off the Douglas Harbour wharf, about 55 kilometres east of Fredericton.
Hansen said the RCMP determined it was the same vehicle.
An RCMP dive team and tow truck were on scene to haul the mid-size car from the harbour.
Hansen said police have no leads, but they continue to investigate.
"This seems to be the latest fad in stolen vehicle disposal," he said. "Just to dump them in the water somewhere, Occasionally, we find them burnt or just abandoned."
Cpl. Raphael Vezina, a dive team member who helped retrieve the car, said there were 16 calls for the dive team in New Brunswick last year.
The team includes four members: a supervisor, a diver, one safety diver and a support member.
"He [the diver] did a circle around the vehicle to search for if there was a body inside," Vezina said. "In this case, there was nobody in there."
At Douglas Harbour, the diver made sure there was no other evidence before attaching the tow truck hook to the vehicle so it could be pulled out.
Venzia said the number of underwater recovery operations depends on the year.
"If I'm searching for somebody or something, my goal is to find that object or that person."
