VANCOUVER -- An escaped convict was arrested after being wounded in a gun battle with RCMP officers and 10 other suspects were taken into custody as police launched simultaneous raids in three municipalities in connection with the kidnap-murder of Sharon Bollivar.
A Burnaby RCMP spokesman said Sunday that no charges had been laid against the 11 suspects. Police would not release any names until charges were laid.
Mrs. Bollivar, a 40-year-old mother of three, was slain last week after an attempt to extort an estimated $8,000 from her supermarket manager husband went awry.
Staff Sgt. William Howitt said the suspect wounded in the capture of three of the 11 suspects at the Caravan Motel in Burnaby was wanted in Toronto for murder and kidnapping.
He said the suspect was an escapee from Collins Bay pentitentiary in Kingston, Ont., where he was serving a sentence for armed robbery. He was also wanted by Toronto police on two counts of murder, kidnapping and forcible seizure.
He was shot during an exchange of several rounds of gunfire outside the room he had been renting, police said.
Howitt said the wounded man suffered head and arm injuries from the police bullets and was rushed to Vancouver General Hospital where he was listed in serious but satisfactory condition.
Some 30 members of the Burnaby detachment launched simultaneous raids at 7 a.m., local time, in Burnaby, Vancouver and Duncan, B.C., on Vancouver Island, Howitt said.
Besides the 11 suspects arrested, Howitt said four vehicles and the suspected murder weapon were seized.
The weapon 'suspected of being used in the slaying' has been located and turned over to the RCMP crime detection laboratory in Vancouver.'
The arrests followed an intensive investigation after Mrs. Bollivar's body was found Tuesday by a roadside on Burnaby Mountain. She had been abducted the previous day on a street near her home in Vancouver as she returned from walking two of her children to school.
The woman's husband, Melvyn, was contacted three times by the kidnappers, who demanded the day's receipts from the grocery store in which he had formerly worked as manager.
No final instructions, however, were given for the money drop.
Officials for Stong's supermarket chain said one day's receipts would have amounted to about $8,000.
