The 100-mph car chase ended in a blaze of gunfire at the Peace Arch, the graceful marble monument that straddles the U.S.-Canada border here and proclaims the two nations to be “Children of a Common Mother.” As two murder suspects from California blew past the U.S. customs station and raced north for the border, a deputy sheriff managed to ram their vehicle with his squad car, spinning it down an embankment and across a broad lawn between the two border stations before it finally came to a stop. The suspects fled on foot, and in the ensuing gun battle, one was wounded; in the end, they were captured. Although the Jan. 24 episode was by far the most dramatic encounter between fugitives and law enforcement officers at the border in recent months, the reaction on the Canadian side unfolded along a standard — if contentious — script: The Canadian border guards walked off their posts. Roughly a dozen times in the last four months, Canadian border guards, who unlike their U.S. counterparts are unarmed, have left their posts in response to reports of dangerous suspects heading north. Full Story
