Vancouver police search for high-risk offender wanted Canada-wide

UPDATE, May 23: Vancouver police say Walkus was located in the Downtown Eastside and rearrested.

ORIGINAL STORY:

Vancouver police are searching for a high-risk offender who is wanted Canada-wide after failing to return to his halfway house.

Johnny Walkus, 37, obtained statutory release from prison Thursday and was ordered to live at a halfway house in Vancouver.

Police say he left shortly before 1:30 p.m. for a meeting with his parole officer, but didn't show up. 

Walkus is described as five feet eight inches tall with a heavy build, short black hair, brown eyes and "Johnny Cash" tattooed on his right forearm. He was last seen wearing a blue T-shirt, grey pants and dark shoes.

Anyone who sees Walkus or has information on his whereabouts is asked to call 911.

The search is one of several incidents this week involving a repeat offender in Vancouver. 

On Thursday, police sent out a news release saying they had arrested high-risk sex offender Randall Hopley, not long after he was released from prison the same day. 

Two days before that, on Tuesday, police said the suspect involved in an assault on the Vancouver seawall last month had been released from a medical facility, where he was under supervision, and will be living under house arrest in Vancouver.

And on Monday, convicted sex offender Hartley Ronald Duckhorn, 35, was arrested and charged after a woman was attacked by a stranger in a Stanley Park bathroom. The latest charges against him have not been proven in court.

Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim has called for "concrete action" from the provincial and federal governments around the incidents.

"Law enforcement agencies have done their job in identifying suspects and making arrests, but the judicial system is repeatedly letting victims down by allowing those with a high risk to reoffend back into the public," Sim said on Thursday.