RCMP drone finds armed robbery suspect on Poundmaker Cree Nation

Mounties from the Cut Knife RCMP detachment used an aerial drone to track down a robbery suspect earlier this month.

According to the RCMP, officers got a report of an armed robbery on the Poundmaker Cree Nation on Friday.

“Investigation determined two individuals approached four victims,” the Mounties explained in a statement.

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“One adult female was assaulted. An adult male was threatened with a firearm, which was discharged into the air, and was forced to drive the suspects to a residence on Poundmaker Cree Nation.”

After allegedly forcing the victim to drive them to a home, the RCMP said the suspects then got into an altercation with another man, and demanded the keys to a truck that was parked in the driveway.

“The keys were not provided to them and the suspects fled the scene on foot,” the RCMP said.

Police said officers used a drone to track down and arrest one of the alleged robbers, a 21-year-old woman, while she was running behind a home on the Cree Nation.

Officers arrested the second suspect, a 27-year-old man from Little Pine First Nation, on Sunday.

Both are now facing charges including robbery with a firearm, assault, uttering threats, and possession of a firearm in a motor vehicle. They were scheduled to appear in court in North Battleford on Monday.

The Saskatchewan RCMP started rolling out the unmanned aircraft to each detachment in the province last year.

Two types of drones are used by the Mounties in the province, including a multi-rotor aircraft that can remain in the air for about an hour, and a fixed-wing drone that can operate for up to seven hours at a time.

In addition to their uses during criminal investigations, the drones have also been used in search-and-rescue situations. RCMP drones were used to locate and rescue a group of hikers from Ricer River Canyon earlier this year, and a spokesperson for the Mounties described them as a “game changer.”