Man arrested after police chase

Around 9 a.m. on June 26, a 30-year-old Verdun woman pulled into the Shell station on St. John’s Boulevard and left her car idling with her windows open as she went into the station for a quick purchase. While she was in line, said Const. Leslie Potts of Montreal police Station 4, she observed a suspicious man eyeing her car. When he hurried around the driver’s side to get in the car, the woman ran from the store, dove in the passenger-side window, grabbed the man’s shirt with one hand and the keys out of the ignition with the other, Potts said.

With that, the man wriggled out his shirt — and the woman’s grasp — and fled south on St. John’s Boulevard. A witness called police and began following the man south and observed him run into an office building at the corner of Brunswick and St. John’s boulevards. When police arrived and combed the building, they were signalled by a receptionist at a dental clinic. When police entered the office, they saw the suspect, a 22-year-old LaSalle man, sitting out of breath and shirtless in the waiting area. The dishevelled, sweaty man had told the woman he was there to meet his girlfriend for her appointment, but nobody even remotely matching the man’s age range was scheduled, thereby also arousing suspicion, Potts said. The man will be charged with attempted theft of a motor vehicle.