He told police he was trying to escape robbers when he was impaledIn what will surely rank as one of the year's more bizarre investigations, Toronto police are examining the circumstances of a man discovered near the playground of a North York elementary school yesterday morning impaled on a steel pole that had penetrated his rectum and left him painfully perched more than a metre off the ground,
"Strange but true
Paramedics cut the pole with a metal saw and took the man to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, where the section still inside him was removed.
Believed to be in his 40s and known to police, he was in good condition after surgery. Detectives were waiting to reinterview him and check his claim that he had scrambled up the tree to escape a robbery, and fell when his three masked assailants tried to drag him back down.
The steel pole on which the man was spiked was tethered to the tree with a guy-line that served as support. The tree and its skinny branches showed no signs of damage.
Roywood Public School has about 270 pupils, ranging from kindergarten to Grade 5. There were no pupils on the premises at the time, but a daycare centre located inside the building was locked down for an hour.
As police canvassed the area, Sgt. Marchack said there was no description of the trio the man said had tried to mug him and that detectives were looking hard at the man's account of events. "We know who we have but I can't comment on any kind of [criminal] history," he said. "The initial call was that he was half-dressed and hanging from the tree in a bound situation, but that was not the case.
"He said two or three suspects, masked, had chased him so he ran up the tree. He said they attempted to pull him down from the tree and he fell on the pole, impaling himself in the rectal area, and that they then fled."