Vehicle Recovered in Vanderhoof

By 250 News

The family of missing 18 year old Daljit Sandhu has recovered the SUV  the young man was driving when it went into the Nechako River  at Vanderhoof , early Saturday morning.

Family members, with the help of some local volunteers from Vanderhoof, took up the search on Saturday afternoon  after members of the Search and Rescue from Fort St James, Vanderhoof, as well as Prince George called off their search.

 The search, according to the police, began at 4:15 Saturday morning and involved an airplane, a helicopter and ground teams.

The family did not give up hope of recovering the vehicle and with local help, continued the search. Shortly after 8:30 last night the vehicle was pulled from the Nechako River a short distance from where it had entered the water. No body was recovered.

Family members said , at that point, about 10 police officers showed up and took charge , saying they were taking the vehicle away.

One member of the family says "I can say this ,  while we were busy searching they were off in the distance just watching us.  They didn’t help us, not even 1% to try and get that vehicle out of the river."

Again family members say what they are being told about what happened and what took place differs.

Harvey Dhillon says " I was told  that they didn’t chase the boys in the SUV .But wait a minute; they were stopped at 3:.25 am. , and at 3:30 they report them in the river."

The police , he said , told him that they saw a cloud of dust and went to investigate it.

This is the way the story pieces together;

• Daljit was with a group of five students who were heading to Prince Rupert for the weekend to visit other students.
• They left Vancouver on Friday in two vehicles, one a Mercedes Benz, the other a rented SUV.
• When they arrived in Vanderhoof they were met with a routine road check,
• Sandhu was driving and did not have a license. He pulled out and headed around the road check.
• The stories differ; the official police story says they were chasing the vehicle, while some officers at the search site said they did not.
• The second youth in the vehicle was able to escape to shore.
•  According to reports , Sandhu was able to get out of the car , and was clinging to some branches not far from where the car went in.  

The family is not giving up, they are asking anyone who has a jet boat that might volunteer to help them try to find Daljit Sandhu  to come to the scene. “We are still holding out hope " says Dhillon.

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