Investigators have released images of two vehicles that may have been involved in an early morning hit and run that left a Calgary police officer seriously injured earlier this year.

Emergency crews were called to the 200 block of Legacy Blvd. S.E. at about 3:00 a.m. on August 18 after a District 8 officer was hit by a vehicle.

The officer was responding to a suspicious vehicle call and was struck by a white, F-150 as it tried to flee the scene.

He was transported to hospital in serious condition.

“The officer is at home recovering from his injuries,” said CPS Superintendent Ryan Ayliffe. “How he was hit in the scene will be part of the investigation that we’re going to keep just to maintain the integrity of it. I don’t want to comment on the officer’s injuries. I’ve spoken to the officer myself and he’s very resilient and I expect that he’ll be back to work, eventually, once he’s recovered.”

The truck was located in the Evergreen area and police think it was stolen on August 8th.

Investigators say decals on the doors of the truck were removed and the licence plate was swapped out several times to hide the F-150 from police.

“So the original licence plate that was on the truck when it was stolen was not the one that was on the truck when it was found.”

Fingerprints and DNA were recovered from the truck and were sent for forensic examination.

Police are waiting for the results and are hopeful that the analysis will help to identify a suspect.

“For forensics, given the nature and the seriousness of the offence, when we send these things to our crime lab it goes into a queue and because our officer, although seriously injured, was not killed or the severity of the offence is such that it’s ranked and it’ll process at a certain time. We expect it’ll happen soon, it just hasn’t happened yet,” said Ayliffe.

The suspect is described as:

  • Caucasian male
  • In his 20s
  • Slim build
  • Brown hair

A CCTV image of a red hatchback was also released and police say a similar vehicle was used to pick up the suspect after he ditched the truck.

“Every single thing that we can do to shed light on who might be responsible for this and all the other offences. So when we’re looking at this investigation, we’re not simply trying to find out who injured our officer, there’s numerous victims as the result of this offender. Property victims, potentially other assaults and we’ll, to the best of our ability, resolve all of those,” Ayliffe said.

Ayliffe says it is tough on the organization when officers are injured in the line of duty but it doesn't change how they respond to incidents like this when it's a member of the community.

"But that doesn’t change how we would respond to it should it be a citizen so we’re just as concerned. If you’re going to run over a police officer in the City of Calgary, there’s nothing stopping you from running over anybody else when you’re driving a stolen vehicle or any sort of crime vehicle so we want to make sure that the person that’s responsible is located and dealt with as quickly as possible so that we are making it safer for not only the community but our officers,” he said. “What our officers do every day is deal with the unknown. So in this instance we have an officer, in the middle of the night, responding to a call for service with a limited amount of information. The information gives them enough to go to a location where something just isn’t right as described by a citizen that’s called for help and so they have to evaluate these conditions in real-time. Evaluate the risk and try to resolve those situations while keeping themselves safe. We know that’s not always the case and this is one of those cases where an officer, through no fault of his own, was injured trying to resolve something in the community so those unknown contacts are very dangerous. Our officers, every officer working patrol, every officer in investigations that’s out there actively in the community, in any capacity, this could happen at any time, so we’re very aware of that.”

Anyone with information about the identity of the vehicles or this incident is asked to call the Calgary Police Service at 403-266-1234 or Crime Stoppers through either of the following methods:

TALK: 1-800-222-8477
TYPE: www.calgarycrimestoppers.org