MANDEL: OPP manhunt quickly nabbed suspected cop killers

Article content

“I have female at gunpoint.”

The manhunt began soon after the couple accused of shooting OPP Const. Greg Pierzchala, 28, in cold blood two days after Christmas 2022 was seen speeding off in a stolen truck through Hagersville.

Witnesses had told police the officer had just arrived at the scene of a vehicle in a ditch at about 2:30 p.m. when he was shot at close range.

Sgt. Kevin York, of the OPP’s Emergency Response Team, said they’d been told to be on the lookout for a female and a male with tattoos on his face and a gun in his pocket.

At 3:55 p.m., the vehicle’s OnStar technology located the stolen black Chevy Silverado on Mississauga Rd. and York went to the address and spoke to Brandon McKenzie, brother of the man later accused of murder.

Randall McKenzie, 27, and Brandi Stewart-Sperry, 32, have pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder at the trial that began last week in Cayuga.

York, now retired, recalled that he asked permission to enter the property.

“Brandon told me, ‘Do what you have to do,'” he testified.

After the sergeant slowly drove his vehicle up the driveway accompanied by two armed members of the Emergency Response Team on foot, they located the empty stolen truck. Brandon then put him in touch by phone with the owner of the home who, he said, told him Randall and a female had run into her house because they needed a tire jack.

The jury has seen that after careening at high speeds, before pulling into the property on the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, the truck had a flat tire.

Now the police had a suspect’s name and approximate age. York put the information over the radio.

The noose tightened a few minutes later when he said the Canine Unit on scene reported voices coming from the bush almost directly behind the house at 3522 Mississauga Rd. A drone spotted two people at the edge of the forest.

But for more precise locating, he called in the OPP helicopter – equipped with thermal imaging – to hunt them down.

OPP Const. Michael Walli was operating the helicopter’s thermal camera when 14 minutes after the helicopter’s arrival, he detected the suspects’ heat signatures in the heavy bush.

“I’ve got them in sight,” he reported on the video played for the jury. “They’re hunkered down. I’m not sure what they’re doing.”

He explained that he then had his pilot follow the two suspects as they began moving so they could guide the Emergency Response Team and the Canine Unit on the ground to their location.

“If we get hands on, arrest both for first-degree murder,” a supervisor is heard instructing over the radio.

The pair then separated, Walli said. At 6:25 p.m., he had zeroed in on Stewart-Sperry and told his colleagues that she was heading westbound.

Waiting for her was Six Nations Police Sgt. Raymond Johnson.

“I could hear crashing through the bush and a female voice,” Johnson testified. “I directed her to walk toward my voice as I did not have a visual on her at the time. It was very dark.”

When the woman emerged, Johnson told her to put her hands up and make no sudden movements.

“Six Nations here,” Johnson can be heard reporting over the police radio at 6:26 p.m. “I’ve got female at gunpoint.”

He identified her in the courtroom as Stewart-Sperry.

After handcuffing the compliant but nervous suspect, Johnson said he took her black Adidas backpack and emptied her pockets of keys, makeup and items used for drugs such as straws, a piece of tin foil and a small baggie.

One down; one to go.

While arresting her, Johnson said he heard a single gunshot.

McKenzie was cornered, with officers waiting in each direction and advancing towards his location.

“He is walking towards you. He is just entering a field,” Walli says over the radio. “I can see a firearm in his hand. He just threw it. He now has his hands in the air. He is walking south directly at you.”

By 6:43 p.m. – just over four hours from the time Pierzchala was shot six times – the alleged gunman was under arrest.

mmandel@postmedia.com