Congratulations, Citizen readers. You made the right call this week in naming RCMP. Cst Aaron Kehler as the 2014 Prince George newsmaker of the year.
Nominated by Citizen court reporter Mark Nielsen, Kehler was introduced to the community on the second day of the Cody Legebokoff trial as the officer who pulled over Legebokoff along Highway 27 between Fort St. James and Vanderhoof on the night of Nov. 27, 2010.
The young constable didn't know it at the time but he had just caught a serial killer no one was looking for yet and ended a murderous spree that had already taken the lives of four women, the last killed just mere moments before his path crossed with Legebokoff on that dark highway.
The reason Kehler was on the highway at the time? He was meeting a colleague from the Vanderhoof detachment to hand over a purse left behind at a car accident the day before. At 9 p.m., on the way to the drop off, he saw Legebokoff's truck pull out from a logging road and head south towards Vanderhoof at high speed. Suspicious, Kehler kept pace and informed Cst. Kanwalprit Sidhu, the officer coming from Vanderhoof to meet him to pick up the purse, that he planned to pull the truck over but only once Sidhu met them, as a precautionary measure.
In other words, Kehler had a hunch the driver had been up to no good.
What Kehler and Sidhu found was a 20-year-old kid wearing only a sweater and shorts, despite the sub-zero temparature and the newly-fallen snow. They noticed a smear of blood on his chin and droplets of blood on his thighs and legs. After seeing a beer can behind the driver's seat, a further search of the cab found a red puddle on the rubber floor mat and Loren Donn Leslie's backpack. Kehler's patdown of Legebokoff before they put him in the back of his car while they searched his truck uncovered her cellphone and a multitool covered in gelled blood.
The investigation that followed led to the discovery of Leslie's body by a conservation officer a short time later. Sidhu formally charged Legebokoff with murder at 12:15 a.m. (the audio from the arrest can be heard on the "Exhibit Cody" page of the Citizen's website).
When B.C. Supreme Court Justice Glen Parrett sentenced Legebokoff to life in prison in September, he praised "the very young and inexperienced police officer whose instincts were sound and on the money" but stressed that "it was luck that began those events."
Luck and a rookie officer with good judgment, fine training and a willingness to do his duty.
The other nominees for Prince George newsmaker of the year all played instrumental roles in the city during 2014 but none of them made as consequential a life-and-death decision as Kehler did.
Greg Pocock bought a junior hockey team, Patti Knezevic curled brilliantly in the provincial and national spotlight, the snow removal was abysmal, the teachers hit the streets in a long and bitter strike and Mayor Shari Green didn't run for re-election and failed in her effort to be the Conservative candidate for Cariboo Prince George in the the next federal election. All of them significant in their own right.
Yet the newsmaker of the year shouldn't be chosen solely because they made bad news or good news, generated a lot of headlines or a lot of debate. The newsmaker of the year title belongs to someone whose words and actions who changed things, for better or worse, and made a difference, rightly or wrongly. With that criteria, some might argue that Legebokoff was the newsmaker of the year but reporter Nielsen, who covered the trial from start to finish, recognized that Kehler's actions led to the investigation, the charges and the murder trial that put away one of the youngest serial killers in Canadian history.
Kehler's timely response also likely saved the lives of one or more area women.
Cst. Kehler may not be a household name in the region like the man he helped put behind bars but Judge Parrett was bang on when he told the court how everyone should be "eternally grateful" for the officer's diligence and Citizen readers were also bang-on in naming Kehler as Prince George's newsmaker of the year.
