After a Crash, a Dazed Man Got Lost in the Woods. And Police Left Him There for 23 Hours

A chronically ill British Columbia man says he spent 23 hours alone in “excruciating pain” in cold, snow-covered woods after a car accident despite RCMP officers attending the scene.

His family alleges shoddy police work is to blame.

Terry Vecchiola, 67, was travelling near Anahim Lake in B.C.’s interior on October 11 when he says at about 5 p.m. he hit a deer and his van slid off the road, rolling and landing on its side. He got out and was quite dazed, but a passerby stopped shortly afterwards to offer him assistance as there’s no cell service in the area. Vecchiola declined a ride, saying he wanted to stay with the van, and the passerby went and reported the accident to the RCMP.

However, when RCMP arrived they found no trace of Vecchiola and, after calling out for him, assumed he had gotten a ride. They took his wallet, prescription, and keys from the van.

An increasingly disoriented Vecchiola had wandered away from his van in search of the deer he hit, got lost in the trees, and had laid down in the snow to catch his breath. When his breathing is belaboured—he has a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease makes breathing difficult—he says he often can’t hear well over the sound of his own breaths, meaning he says he couldn’t didn’t hear the police.

He was alone in near-freezing conditions and lost.

At some point in the night, Vecchiolafelt so afraid that he tapped out a few text messages to his wife. He had no service but thought they might help her understand what happened if he died.

“I am so sorry I got disoriented after my accident and wondered off into the forest I can’t breath and am stuck in this place. I don’t know why the rescue people have not been looking for me. I think I’m going to die here. I love you all tbye[sic].”

Meanwhile, Vecchiola’s wife, Norma Gardiner, was thrown but not overly concerned when Vecchiola didn’t check in like usual that night after arriving in Tweedsmuir, where he was driving for a job. The next morning, when “about 150 phone calls” to Vecchiola went straight to voicemail she got worried, and called around to RCMP detachments asking if there had been any car accidents.

It took until roughly 2 p.m. before Gardiner says she was finally connected with one of the Mounties who’d been to the accident scene the night before. By 4 p.m., they’d found him, dehydrated and hypothermic. He was taken to a local hospital where he spent several days being checked out for breathing issues before being flown south to a bigger hospital to get specialized cardiac care.

Since the incident, Gardiner has been pushing for answers about the RCMP’s handling of the case, but says she’s been told her only recourse is to file a complaint with the RCMP’s Civilian Review and Complaints Commission and request a copy of the Mounties’ accident report through access to information.

Neither option is particularly appealing given the concerns around Mountie accountability Gardiner has seen in the news. In October, the head of the CRCC criticized the RCMP commissioner for how long it takes her to respond to misconduct findings, an issue “of significant concern, as lengthy delays serve to obscure transparency, dilute the effects of findings and reduce or eliminate the value of recommendations.”

And in November, the information Commissioner released a blistering report, finding that “by nearly every measure, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is failing in terms of its obligation to ensure that Canadians have access to information about its operations and decision-making.”

Gardiner, who’s watched her husband’s health deteriorate in the wake of the accident to the point he struggles to navigate the stairs in their home, says the entire ordeal could have been avoided if the responding officers had just run the licence plate of her van, which was in her name.

“I’m hoping that the RCMP starts being accountable,” she said, “that they never let this happen again.”

Northern B.C. RCMP spokesperson Madonna Saunderson told VICE World News via email that the circumstances relayed by the family do “not appear reflective of the information available to the officers at the time of dispatch, the officer’s actions, and/or subsequent investigation into the incident.” However, the police force did not provide any specifics about what elements of Vecchiola and Gardiner’s story they believe are inaccurate.

Recordings of two conversations between Gardiner and a staff sergeant, which Gardiner provided to VICE World News, at the Anahim Lake detachment suggest the officers who responded to the Oct. 11 crash either didn’t run the licence plate or did but failed to alert Gardiner, the van’s registered owner. The RCMP did not respond to questions about running the licence plate or the timeline as outlined in the recording.

Running a licence plate is “policing 101,” said Chris Butler, a retired Calgary police officer who has no specific knowledge of RCMP operations and spoke generally based on his own experiences. It’s “the starting point for any investigation,” he said.

Vecchiola and Gardiner live in Port Coquitlam in the Lower Mainland, but because of his compromised immune system, Vecchiola frequently travels north for more remote drywalling jobs that don’t put him in such close contact with people during the pandemic.

From the car that alerted the RCMP, the staff sergeant told Gardiner, they knew Vecchiola was last seen upright and seemingly uninjured. From the scene, they found his wallet, keys, and prescription medications but no blood. They called out to him, tried to find footprints leading away, and in the end, the staff sergeant told Gardiner, “they drew the conclusion that it was reasonable that (Vecchiola) got picked up on the highway and was making his way in.”

That conclusion is “very possible,” Butler said, “but why would you leave your wallet and your medication in your vehicle? That would be sort of the disconnect for me as a cop.”

According to the staff sergeant in the recording, Anahim Lake has four Mounties stationed to it, which makes it impossible to have 24/7 coverage. Their dispatch is handled remotely from Prince George, a seven-hour drive away. There was a note in the file to call the owner of the vehicle, but Gardiner beat them to it. (The staff sergeant has since told Gardiner that “now, regardless of what the assessment is on scene of an accident, the expectation is that the registered owner of the vehicle will be contacted or a message will be left.”) The RCMP did not provide comment when asked about this statement.

“That is easily the most basic and ridiculous oversight,” said Chad Haggerty, who was a Mountie for 17 years, primarily in rural Alberta. However, Haggerty did caution that cops are busy and human; they make mistakes.

“All of the training provided by the RCMP dictates that the first thing you do in a traffic situation is query the licence plates,” he said. “It’s standard operating procedure.”

Gardiner finds the combination of not running the plates and assuming her husband had gotten a lift but left behind his prescription medication and wallet too much.

“I had to phone them, begging them to go look for him,” she said.

Vecchiola spent several days in a Vancouver ICU having his heart tested. He says he was diagnosed with two leaky valves and is now awaiting surgery. He has numbness in his toes and sometimes his fingers. He hasn’t been able to go back to work and his family is crowdfunding to support him after his insurance claim was denied on the basis there was no evidence of a deer (they’re appealing). Vecchiola is plagued by nightmares about being eaten by wild animals in the woods.

“He’s a wreck,” Gardiner said.

Saunderson, the RCMP spokesperson, says the force wasn’t aware of the extent of Vecchiola’s injuries until VICE World News inquired about the case. As a result, she says, the RCMP has alerted the Independent Investigations Office of British Columbia (IIO). A spokesperson confirmed the office is investigating.

Saunderson said the RCMP detachment in Anahim Lake has also now been outfitted with a FLIR system that “detects heat signals and can allow officers to locate individuals in total darkness.”

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