Episode 09: Shootout at False Creek Flats

On February 26, 1947 Vancouver Police officers Charles Boyes and Oliver Ledingham were murdered in a shootout at False Creek Flats.

This story is from Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance

Fats Robertson:

On February 26, 1947, three teenagers planned to rob the Royal Bank at Renfrew and First Avenue in East Vancouver. Seventeen-year-old William (Fats) Robertson, was upset with his friends for leaving him out of the robbery and tipped off police. Just as the teens were putting on their stocking masks, police rolled up. A  car chase ensued, ending when the boys bailed out of the car and tried to lose police in the rail yards of False Creek flats.

Detective Percy Hoare had managed to disarm William Henderson, 17 but was unable to stop the gun fight. Officers Oliver Ledingham and Charles Boyes were killed, and Hoare, was shot in the leg and shoulder. Badly injured, but still able to shoot, Hoare killed 18-year-old Doug Carter. Another of his bullets hit Harry Medos, also 18, in the leg.

Shots fired:

Vancouver lawyer and gun expert Richard Berrow tells me that Detective Hoare’s actions were quite incredible. “He struck Carter twice and Medos once, while they were running away. That’s three hits with six rounds, by an officer who’d been hit twice himself in the leg and his non-shooting arm by a big, heavy, .44 calibre bullet.,” he says. “The three hits Hoare achieved (with his .38 army special) would have been a fine result even if he had not been injured at all. In modern time, deadly force shooting data out of the US indicates that today’s officers achieve an overall hit rate of 22% to 52% in violent encounters.

“The 1940s era police service revolver like Hoare’s Colt and the equivalent Smith & Wessons held only six rounds but were quite accurate, probably more so than the modern Glock-type pistols carried by most police nowadays.”

Between 1912 and 1987, 16 Vancouver police officers have been killed in the line of duty. The officers are remembered in an exhibit at the Vancouver Police Museum, For more information see:  In Memoriam

Logo Image: False Creek Flats, 1954. Vancouver Sun photo

 Credits:

• Intro and outro music: Duke Ellington’s St. Louie Toodle
• Steve Sweeney (retired VPD Deputy Chief of Police)
• Richard J. Berrow (Vancouver lawyer and gun expert)
• Intro and voice of Inspector Vance: Mark Dunn
• Words of Detective Percy Hoare voiced by Matt Walton
• Words of Mae Carter and Mary Magdalene Peterson voiced by Megan Dunn
• Background track created by Nico Vettese wetalkofdreams.com

Sources:

• Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance, Vancouver’s First Forensic Investigator, by Eve Lazarus (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2017)
• Vital Statistics
• Coroner’s Inquest for Officers Boyes and Ledingham, courtesy BC Archives
• Vancouver Police Museum and Archives
• The personal files of Inspector John F.C.B. Vance
• Newspapers: Vancouver Sun, Province, Vancouver News Herald, Daily Colonist, Globe & Mail