Fishing line strung across Thomson Place that injured a couple on a motorcycle last weekend was not put there intentionally, Central Saanich police say.

Cpl. Dan Cottingham said a man contacted police after hearing about the incident and said he had been towing a boat laden with fishing gear just before it happened.

article continues below

He said his fishing rods were upright in racks on the boat, and when he got home he discovered one rod was missing its line. He thought it likely the line had become caught in a low branch.

Cottingham said it was an unusual set of circumstances.

“It’s not a scenario that ever crossed my mind in this, for sure,” he said. “A first for us.”

Cottingham said the man realized his possible connection to the situation after seeing news reports. “He called us right away and felt terrible that he might have been responsible for it.”

The man identified the line recovered at the scene as being the same type he uses.

It was good to find out the line was not put there on purpose, Cottingham said. “That was our biggest concern. The fact that it was done accidentally poses obviously the same danger to the motorcyclist, but it was a relief to know that no one had deliberately done it.”

Investigators believe the line either got caught on the side of the motorcycle or its undercarriage, causing it to tighten and snap across the windshield. The man and woman riding the bike suffered minor cuts and were not seriously injured, but were shaken.

Cottingham said there are plenty of trees on Thomson Place that could snag a fishing line.

“With the height of [the] boat and his rods being straight up in the air, being nine-foot rods they’re up about 15 feet.”

The line hooked onto something as the man drove by “and then eventually it all came unraveled,” Cottingham said.

“What’s interesting is we had a couple more witnesses come forward to say that they actually drove their car through it and it got caught up in their car, so some of it would have got broken off.”

Cottingham said he hopes news of the strange case can keep anything similar from happening again.

“We’re hoping to get a warning out to other boaters that carry their rods like that just to beware of some of these rural streets that they’re on and that this can happen.”

jwbell@timescolonist.com