'Drop your gun': One Alberta family's harrowing encounter with an armed trespasser

The man stood in their driveway, his face obscured by a hoodie and sunglasses.

"He had a gun in his hand and walked towards us and started yelling, 'Get out of the car,'" Orvis Sorgen told CBC News, recounting the dramatic events of Oct. 12, 2018.

On the Prairies, crime risk in rural areas is 36 to 42 per cent higher than in urban centres, Statistics Canada said in 2017. Long distances often separate rural communities from the RCMP detachments that serve them.

Sorgen's story is just one example of what many rural Albertans fear will happen in their communities.

• Mapping out rural crime in Alberta
• Crime rates higher in rural Canada — especially on the Prairies, StatsCan says

Orvis and his wife, Carol, had just returned to their rural property near Wanham, Alta., after a family shopping trip to Grande Prairie, about 100 kilometres south.

The trespasser had arrived in a car. But he wanted another car — theirs.

They pleaded with him. Could they get their four-year-old foster daughter out of the backseat?

No deal. The trespasser pushed the barrel of his gun into Orvis's chest.

"Give me the keys."

Our first priority is to immediately respond to situations where there is a threat to personal safety.- RCMP spokesperson Fraser Logan

But Carol grabbed the car keys and ran inside. She locked the keys in the freezer room.

The man followed her in and fired a bullet through the living room wall.

Carol pushed past him, ran back outside, grabbed the girl from the car and pulled her inside the house.

She got the keys, handed them over. The man ran out the back door.

Orvis had gone down to the basement for his rifle.

He fought with three locks to get the rifle and bullets, then ran out the front door.

The man was moving things from the car he was driving to the Sorgens' family car.

"I said, 'You drop your gun or I'm going to put a bullet through you,'" Orvis told him. 

The man started shooting.

Orvis shot back.

When he ran out of ammunition, the man crouched behind the Sorgens' car and struggled to reload.

The police dug three or four bullets out of the wall behind me.- Orvis Sorgen

Orvis moved closer, taking cover behind the other side of the family car.

"I just shot beside him to scare him," he said.

When the trespasser ran out of bullets for good, he raised his arms and asked Orvis not to shoot, Orvis said. Then he ran off. Orvis figures the man had fired seven bullets. He said he shot his rifle four times.

When RCMP officers arrived, a police dog found the suspect in a nearby field, Orvis said.

"The police dug three or four bullets out of the wall behind me where he had been shooting at me," he said.

During their ordeal, the couple didn't know that police had been alerted by a neighbour and were on their way.

It can sometimes take officers upwards of 40 minutes to respond to an emergency, a reality that probably contributed to the incident at the Sorgens' home, Orvis said.  

RCMP don't give out statistics on response times because many factors are at play, said RCMP spokesperson Fraser Logan. 

"What I can say is our first priority is to immediately respond to situations where there is a threat to personal safety," Logan said.

The man who terrorized the couple now faces 25 criminal charges, including three counts of discharging a firearm with intent to endanger life. 

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for next June. 

Orvis and Carol have had some time to reflect.

"It's been pretty cool around our area now because I guess word got out that I had a shootout," Orvis said.

"We need some protection in rural areas. Criminals know it takes 40 minutes for the police to get here from Spirit River."

Early in December, Justice Minister Doug Schweitzer announced plans to hire hundreds of additional RCMP officers as part of the province's ongoing offensive to combat rural crime.

• Municipalities will pay up as Alberta adds 300 RCMP officers to combat rural crime
• Alberta sheriffs, fish and wildlife officers to gain new powers under proposed rural crime plan

But the Sorgens are still worried, especially since the man who appeared on their property is a repeat offender.

Orvis thinks the court system isn't taking rural crime seriously enough. 

"I hope we have a legal system that … protects the citizens," he said.

"Life has been pretty shaky," he added. "Every time you see a strange car drive in the yard, you're wondering who it is."