If this event were played out today, the final storyline would probably be: Scheideman has recently obtained employment at the local mill where the reluctant employer has agreed to hire him for a probationary period of six months. He has agreed to undergo counselling and other therapy until he is thought to be able to control his aggressive behaviour. The community is still reeling and has plunged into a campaign to eliminate all firearms, particularly those formerly used by the police.
When this incident happened in 1974, the community of Golden was very appreciative of what we had done. The local newspaper ran the story with a headline very much in support of the armed pursuit and eventual removal of the dangerous driver from the public road. My daughter, who was in grade three, was assisted by one of her teachers in making a small wooden trophy with a sports car at the top. The words “Sharp Shot Scheideman” were printed on the side of the trophy and “To Dad, Love Sherry” on the base.
I still have that trophy.
The Mysterious Charred Man of Rogers Pass
The Rogers Pass section of the Trans-Canada Highway cuts through some of the most rugged mountain terrain in Canada. A large part of the highway route lies in Glacier and Revelstoke National Parks and has not been impacted by logging. Much of the eastern slope of the Selkirk Mountains along the highway is outside the park system. Every creek valley outside the park has a logging road into the upper reaches and the scars of modern clearcut logging are very evident. It was on one of these logging roads that this story begins.
Two young men were driving along the highway toward Golden from Revelstoke in the very early hours of the morning. They had just crossed the boundary out of Glacier Park and were talking about switching drivers when they saw the headlights of a car facing them. They were still some distance away when they realized that it was not moving. They could see that there was something or someone moving around on the highway in front of the parked car. They slowed and moved to the right, thinking the car may have hit an animal and that the animal might get into their path as well. They watched closely to determine what was happening, unable to see clearly because of the glare from the light beams of the stationary car.
As they came almost alongside the car and were partly out of the direct beam of the headlights, they saw that what they had thought was an animal was in fact a man on his hands and knees a few feet from the front of the car. They stopped to find out what was happening and to offer assistance. Nothing could have prepared them for what they met on the dark road that night. The lights from the car revealed a person who would have been unrecognizable even to his best friend. The person was black from head to toe, burned so badly that his ears and nose were gone. His eyelids and mouth would no longer move, and all his clothing was burned away except for the partial remains of a pair of jockey shorts and his ankle high boots. He was wringing his hands, begging for help, and pleading for a drink of water. As he wrung his hands, the skin peeled away up to his wrists and complete tubes of skin pulled off his fingers.
The two young men found a bottle of pop in their car and gave it to the man, but he was unable to get the bottle to his mouth. One of the helpers held the bottle and tried to get some of the liquid into the unmoving mouth. The man was over six feet tall and he had gotten to his feet when the helpers approached, which made the providing of a drink almost impossible. They helped the burned man into the back seat of their car, moved the other car to the shoulder of the highway, and sped toward Golden. Enroute, the burned man began to wail and scream whenever he was not begging for water. The smell of burned flesh filled the car and before long both of the helpers had vomited until they could bring up nothing more. The twenty miles to Golden were, and will always remain, the longest piece of road those two had ever travelled.
At last the lights of the community could be seen ahead. It was two thirty in the morning when they pulled into the first service station that was open. There happened to be a small café attached to the gasoline station and both sides of the business remained open twenty-four hours a day.
Golden is situated at the confluence of the Kicking Horse River and the Columbia River. There are no all-night services for almost one hundred miles to the east and ninety miles to the west. Everyone who travels that route at night will stop in Golden for fuel and food, resulting in the all-night places being continually busy.
There were twenty-five or thirty people sitting around having snacks or coffee when the burned man lurched into the bright lights of the café and asked for water. He was followed by the young men who had found him on the highway, who had now partially recovered from the initial shock of what they had found. They got the burned man onto a chair and began to pour glass after glass of water into the charred hole that had been his mouth. Someone called for an ambulance and the police. The café emptied.
One of the young constables from Golden arrived and was told the story by the two helpers. He was able to converse with the burned man in a very limited way; however, it was obvious that the man did not wish to tell him how he had been burned. The man said he had been camping alone in the mountains when it happened. An ambulance soon arrived and took him to the hospital in Golden.
One of the few doctors in the small community happened to be at the hospital when the ambulance arrived. No one, including the doctor, had ever seen a living person that badly burned. The doctor was amazed that the man had not lost consciousness. The doctor determined that there was little that could be done for him. He tried, without success, to find a vein to inject pain medication, and he attempted to give pain killers by mouth and by intra-muscular injection but these things appeared to have little if any effect.
The man had totally lost control by the time he arrived at the hospital. He would not respond to questions or requests and he frantically thrashed about, moaning and screaming and trying to get up from the emergency-room bed. Restraint straps were placed over his pelvic area and legs. His continual movement made the spectacle that much more gruesome.
The doctor told the constable that the man would soon drown and that there was no way to delay or prevent it. He said that the lungs are very dependent on the skin, and that in severe burn cases involving large portions of the skin, the most common complication is a rapid fluid build-up in the lungs. The fluid build-up increases in proportion to the amount of skin that has been burned, and drowning is the actual cause of death in most severe burn cases.
The man died about four long hours after he arrived at the hospital. The staff from the little hospital went home totally exhausted that morning.
Meanwhile, the night shift officer had driven out and found the abandoned car, which was towed to secure storage. It had been parked near a logging road that branched off the highway and went up a creek valley into the mountains.The side road appeared to be a good place to start looking for clues about the mysterious burned man. This incident happened in the late fall and there was snow on the ground in the higher areas of the Rogers Pass. There was no snow where the car had been found, but as the constable drove up the road in the darkness he reached an elevation where the recent snowfall still covered the ground. There were tire tracks visible in the snow. Close examination of these tracks indicated that only one vehicle had been up and down the road since the snow; the tire impressions were similar to the tires on the car where the burned man had been found. The constable followed the tracks up the logging road in the snow. After about three miles, the road came into a clearing where forestry operations had gathered logs prior to hauling them out. The leveled area of the clearing was at the point where the creek valley split, and a road went into each of the branches of the valley. The same tire tracks were visible on both roads leading further into the mountains.
The constable picked the road to the left from the landing area and followed the tracks. The snow on the ground was getting deeper with the increased elevation and he could see that the vehicle had been having some difficulty due to the lack of traction. The police vehicle was equipped with four-wheel drive and had no trouble in the snow. The tracks showed where the suspect car had lost traction on a steep part of the road and had to back down and get a better run to get over that area. The driver of the car showed a considerable degree of driving skill to maintain control and to force the car through the adverse conditions.
After about another two miles on the