“Sorry, I had to do it.” With those words, a man walked out of the Sawridge Inn & Conference Centre with a giant bison head that had been hanging on the lobby wall. He put it into a truck and sped off.
Police gave chase, caught the man and returned the head to its owner last Thursday morning.
The man had been hanging around the hotel lobby just after midnight on Apr. 27.
“He told the front desk he was waiting for his boss,” says manager David Nelson.
Police responded quickly. They were on the scene within seconds of receiving the call, Nelson says, and located the white Ford truck heading east on Hwy. 2. The driver refused to stop and a chase ensued.
“Speeds averaged 155 kph and covered a distance of approximately 70 kilometres,” says a news release from RCMP Const. S.L. Gray.
The pursuit ended at the end of Range Road 680, south of Chisholm, where police arrested the man. They also took the bison head into custody. It was a bit worse for wear, with one horn broken off and the nose smashed up.
The mounted head is huge. It’s not as heavy as it looks (about 75 lbs. Nelson estimates), but it is a cumbersome object to carry. It’s been hanging in the Sawridge lobby for many years and nobody has ever messed with it before as far as Nelson knows. Certainly not in the 14 years he’s worked there.
The suspect, it turned out, was on the run from the law. Camrose RCMP have four outstanding warrants for his arrest on charges of that rang e from driving an uninsured vehicle to failure to return a suspended license. Ponoka RCMP is after him for vehicle theft.
Daniel Edward Fraser, 25, faces nine new charges arising from last week’s bison head incident. They are: possession of stolen property over $5,000, possession under $5,000, theft under $5,000, failing to stop for police, dangerous operation of a vehicle, assaulting a police officer with intent to resist arrest, unlawful operation of an unregistered vehicle, unlawful operation of an uninsured vehicle and unlawful operation of a motor vehicle.
He was to appear in Slave Lake Provincial Court on May 4.
By noon on Thursday the news had gotten out and attracted attention as far away as Toronto. Nelson said he got a phone call from a Toronto radio station that had received at least one call from somebody mentioning the buffalo head caper. The Edmonton daily papers also got into the act, running stories in their Friday editions.
The story even made the front page of the Journal, causing a few chuckles around town.

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