RCMP are looking for more information to assist in their investigation of a seemingly random shooting of a cyclist near Spences Bridge in the early morning hours of June 1.

Burnaby cyclist Craig Premack, 59, was participating in the Cache Creek 600 cycling event, which sees riders make a two-day, 600 kilometre journey from Pitt Meadows to Cache Creek.

After resting in Spences Bridge for three hours, Premack was back riding on the road shortly before 1 a.m. on June 1 and had been back on Highway 1 for about 10 minutes when he was shot in his right forearm.

At a news conference in Surrey on Tuesday, Premack told reporters he saw a dark-coloured vehicle leave a pullout near where he had been shot.

“I couldn’t believe it was happening. It was almost like a bad dream,” Premack told reporters.

He had no use of his arm and fashioned a tourniquet out of a pair of pants and waited for help to arrive.

After about 20 minutes, other cyclists came upon him and one of them cycled back to Spences Bridge to get help.

Premack spent the night in Ashcroft hospital. He had surgery to repair his right elbow in Vancouver and will start physiotherapy soon.

The bullet entered about a centimetre below Premack’s elbow and shattered the bone, which now has a plate and screws to hold the fragments together, he told reporters.

Premack said he is worried about the long-term effects of being shot and the financial strain of not being able to work.

He said he was making a personal appeal for anyone with information to come forward to officers.

“The outcome would be tragic should this ever happen again,” Premack said in a prepared statement.

RCMP Inspector Ed Boettcher called it a “brazen, unprovoked and potentially deadly attack.”

Other riders told officers two men in a dark-coloured pickup truck threw objects at them as they passed.

Although there’s nothing linking those incidents to the shooting, RCMP are asking anyone with information that might help them identify the two
men to contact Lytton RCMP at 250-455-2225 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

Victim of Connector crash identified

The BC Coroners Service has released the name of the man who was killed when his truck struck the back of a transport truck near Loon Lake Hill on July 25.

William John Jones, 75, was the lone occupant of a westbound truck that struck the rear of a westbound transport truck with two trailers about
1.5 kilometres east of Loon Lake.

Jones was transported by air ambulance to Kelowna General Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.

The Coroners Service and RCMP are continuing their investigation.