Two RCMP constables showed up at a Dartmouth, N.S., home on Friday searching for a drunk driving suspect, seemingly unaware the man they wanted to speak to had been found dead more than a year ago in a homicide case that remains unsolved.
The incident was captured on a doorbell camera at the home of Leslie Sparks, mother of Tyrell Beals, and shared with CBC News.
Beals’s body was discovered last May near a road in North Preston and RCMP said the 36-year-old had sustained gunshot wounds. Two months ago, the Mounties issued a news release asking for help to solve the homicide.
An RCMP spokesperson declined an interview about Friday’s incident, but said in a statement that officers were responding to a report of an impaired driver in the 800 block of Sackville Drive in Lower Sackville.
In what appears to have been a case of mistaken identity, they went to a home “and it was quickly determined that the individual being sought did not reside at the address,” according to the statement.
The name of the suspect was “similar to that of a former resident,” the statement said.
Beals’s 15-year-old sister was home when police showed up. His young twin daughters were also there.
On the video, the teen is heard asking the Mounties, “How do you have a complaint for someone who’s not even alive?”
One of the officers replied, “What?”
Sparks, who was out running errands, got on her daughter’s speakerphone to handle the questions.
“He’s not driving anything because you can’t drive a car in heaven,” she said.
She chastised the officers for not knowing her son was deceased.
“I don’t know who made a complaint, but you guys need to … you got to get things right,” she said.
An officer apologized for the “misunderstanding,” and said they would “tell the people who made the complaint what’s going on.”
For Sparks, the apology is meaningless.
“Haven’t we been through enough?” Sparks said in an interview with CBC News. “You [RCMP] just keep traumatizing me and my family over and over.
“I don’t know why you didn’t get the memo, RCMP, but my son’s been dead since last year.”
The incident at her front door has deepened her suspicion that police are putting no effort into solving the case.
“There is no investigation,” Sparks said. “I truly believe their investigation is just to silence me.”
