RCMP officer shoots man while investigating alleged oilfield gear theft

An Alberta RCMP officer has shot a man he first found sleeping in a truck, investigators say.

The man suffered a single gunshot wound and remainsin hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries.

Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) announced the officer-involved shooting in a statement lateMonday afternoon. The shooting, however, took place on Saturday morning.

Around 8:15 a.m. MT, a police officer respondedto call about an alleged oilfield battery theft at 54 Avenue in Eckville, a town about 45 kilometres west of Red Deer.

While looking in four parked vehicles, the officer came across a man asleep in Ford 250 pickup truck, ASIRT says.

The officer ran the licence plate number and found it registered to a different vehicle. So he placed a spike belt under the truck'stires, and went back to his own car to waitfor back up.

Then, "a confrontation occurred," investigators say, and the officer shot the man with his service pistol.

A spokesperson for RCMP said he was unable to answer questions on the shooting or the original investigation into the alleged oil field theft. It remains unclear if the police recovered any stolen batteries.

However, police did findthe Ford 250 had been stolen about five days earlierfrom Saskatoon, ASIRT says. The licence had been separately stolen.

In a statement, RCMP said the officer had spotted a sledgehammer and a large can of bear spray on the truck's front seat. There's been no word of police laying charges against the injured man.

This is the second officer-involved shooting assigned to ASIRT to investigate in recent weeks. On March 23, a Calgary Police Service officer fired his rifle, hitting a suspect in an alleged armed home invasion.