Trail of destruction on Highway 2 puts driver from Ontario in jail on 14 charges

An Ontario man has been charged with 14 offences after leading police on a destructive chase on the Trans-Canada Highway in northwestern New Brunswick that reached speeds near 200 kilometres an hour, RCMP say.

The trouble began late in the afternoon on March 16, when police tried to pull the man over near Saint-André for speeding in his pickup truck.

RCMP allege the man sped away and while evading pursuit clipped another police vehicle that had stopped to investigate an unrelated motor vehicle accident.

"As several RCMP detachments responded, police received multiple other calls of incidents between Grand Falls and Perth-Andover involving the same vehicle and driver," the RCMP said in a statement. 

"These included several other incidents along the highway of hit and run, as well as two attempted car thefts, and an assault."

At one point, the man abandoned the pickup truck and attacked the owner of another vehicle, which he then stole.

Police said they briefly stopped the vehicle, but the driver attacked them with mace and escaped again. 

Police tried again to stop the car, and the driver narrowly missed hitting a police officer while speeding away. The man was finally stopped in Bairdsville and a search of the vehicle turned up drug paraphernalia and what was expected to be identified as crystal methamphetamine.

Two members of the public and two police officers were treated in hospital and released.

The man, from Elora, Ont., was charged in Woodstock provincial court with 14 offences, including flight from a police officer, dangerous operation of a motor vehicle, assault with a weapon, assaulting a police officer with a weapon, causing bodily harm, driving while prohibited, and possession of a prohibited weapon.

The man was kept in custody until a bail hearing.