Whitehorse man pleads guilty for role in 2024 convenience store robbery, police chase

Jackie Hong · CBC News

· Posted: May 23, 2025 6:14 PM EDT | Last Updated: 3 hours ago

A Whitehorse man has pleaded guilty to charges related to his role in a 2024 convenience store robbery in Porter Creek and the dramatic police chase that followed.

Kody Smith, 29, entered guilty pleas in territorial court last month to one count each of robbery using threats of violence and failing to stop a vehicle being pursued by police. 

He's currently awaiting an assessment to see if he's eligible for the rest of his case to be handled through wellness court instead of regular sentencing. 

The truck, a white Ford 350, had been stolen from Cobalt Construction's compound on the Alaska Highway earlier that day and was last seen heading towards Porter Creek.

A "concerned person" who saw Smith and the other man enter Heather's Haven flagged down police patrolling the area. However, the agreed statement of facts says the stolen truck fled from the store "at a high rate of speed," heading southbound down the highway and evading police by driving down "a dirt trail into the Takhini subdivision." 

Police next saw the truck at the Barracks Apartments building on Range Road, where one person briefly got out. Within minutes, police then saw it on Two Mile Hill travelling on to Hamilton Boulevard but lost sight of it. 

Smith was driving the truck when officers saw it again as it turned onto Robert Service Way, the document continues. He didn't stop the truck when police vehicles activated their emergency lights and attempted to pull it over, making a U-turn instead. 

Police had set up a spike strip which the truck drove over, puncturing its fronts and rear passenger's side tires. However, the truck still didn't stop, continuing eastbound down Hamilton Boulevard and "avoiding a collision with another vehicle on the road." 

Smith and one of the passengers then got out of the truck and "attempted to enter the other vehicle but were unsuccessful." They got back into the truck while the third person fled on foot, with Smith driving it down Hamilton Boulevard until a police vehicle hit it on the side near, causing the truck "to turn sideways and spin out." 

The truck finally came to a stop, with Smith remaining in the driver's seat and getting arrested by police while the other person fled on foot. 

The agreed statement of facts does not name either of the other two suspects who were in the truck.

Charges against co-accused still before court

Police, including officers with tactical gear and weapons, launched a large-scale manhunt in Granger after Smith's arrest. His co-accused, Nathan Ouimet, was later arrested at a house in the neighbourhood, with the charges against him, including robbery and break-and-enter, still before the courts. 

Police arrested a third man that day — Tyrell Sidney —  and named him in news releases about the incident, alleging that officers had seen him driving the stolen truck and that he was one of the suspects who fled on foot. However, his case was later separated in court from Smith and Ouimet's and the robbery-related charges against him dropped. 

Sidney pleaded guilty last October to six charges against him laid after a series of incidents in 2024 related to driving stolen vehicles and driving despite being prohibited to do so anywhere in Canada, including on May 13, 2024. 

The agreed statement of facts in his case say that police officers were on Squatters Road in Whitehorse that day investigating another matter when they saw a man driving a stolen blue Nissan Titan truck. They followed it and found it abandoned at the end of the road with the hood still warm, with police dogs locating Sidney "a short distance into the woods" nearby. 

Sidney initially received a five-and-a-half-month-long conditional sentence for all the charges followed by a year of probation and a five-year driving ban, but that was revoked in December after he violated his conditions and he was sent to jail instead.