Commercial Appeal Press Services
EDMONTON, Alberta — The man wanted in an armored car heist at a Canadian university that left three armed guards dead was carrying $330,000 in cash and no passport when he was arrested by U.S. border officials, police said Sunday.
Travis Baumgartner was stopped Saturday near a border crossing in Lynden, Washington, southwest of Abbotsford, British Columbia.
He was driving a Ford F-150 truck with the Alberta license plate that police had been seeking, Police Supt. Bob Hassel said. Hassel said the suspect tried to cross the border with his driver’s license. He had the cash in a backpack.
Thomas Schreiber of U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the suspect didn’t have a gun and was arrested without incident.
Baumgartner, 21, had been on the run since Friday when four armed guards were gunned down, three fatally. He faces three counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.
Hassel said the injured guard remains in critical condition.
Baumgartner was the fifth member of a G4S Cash Solutions crew that was reloading bank machines at a University of Alberta mall and residence where the shooting happened, police said. The armored truck was found abandoned but running not far from the security company’s offices. Dead at the scene were Michelle Shegelski, 26; Eddie Rejano, 39; and Brian Ilesic, 35.
Police had launched an international manhunt to find Baumgartner.
G4S Cash Solutions spokeswoman Robin Steinberg said Baumgartner had been on the job for just three months.
Such shootings are rare in Canada. The oil boom town of Fort McMurray, Alberta, however, often has drug-related shootings, and Vancouver often has gang shootings. Gunfire at Toronto’s most prominent mall this month left two dead and several injured, and a shooting at an Edmonton club in 2006 left three dead.
Copyright 2012 The Commercial Appeal, Inc.