Notorious sex offender Randall Hopley has been re-arrested shortly after he obtained statutory release from prison.
Hopley was released on Thursday morning from Mission Institution and was directed to reside at a halfway house in Vancouver.
Police said he refused the directions of his parole officer and left the halfway house.
A Canada-wide warrant was issued, and Hopley was arrested by Vancouver police on Thursday afternoon.
He remains in custody, police said.
B.C. Premier Daivd Eby called the incident outrageous.
“The last time Mr. Hopley was released, he terrified a family and the entire province,” Eby said.
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“I can’t fathom how he would be released again, and also deeply disappointed that notification was not provided by Corrections Canada to the public, especially in the immediate area of where Mr. Hopley was planned to be released, so people could prepare.”
Eby added that he wants to thank the Vancouver police for being on top of the situation but cases like these highlight how confidence in the justice system is being tested.
“This was a decision, as I understand, made by federal corrections,” he said.
“One of the key messages that came from the premier’s table that we will be communicating to the federal government is that the federal legal requirements around least restrictive means of holding somebody, whether its for bail or otherwise, that the emphasis should be on release is something that is really testing the public’s confidence in the justice system right now.”
In a statement to Global News, Corrections Canada said that before an offender is released into any community, it undertakes “comprehensive pre-release planning, including the completion of a community supervision plan that outlines the measures required for the protection of society.”
This is not the first time Hopley has left his halfway house.
Hopley was charged in 2024 after disappearing from his halfway house in November 2023.
He went missing for 10 days in 2023, and the convicted sex offender cut off his ankle monitoring device before he fled the facility.
He was sentenced to spend another 18 months in jail.
In 2024, Hopley pleaded guilty to failing to attend court, breaking a long-term supervision order by being in the presence of children under 16 and failing or refusing to comply with a long-term supervision order by failing to reside at a community residential facility on April 26, 2023.
Hopley is known for abducting a three-year-old boy from a southeastern B.C. home in 2011.
The 59-year-old made international headlines in September 2011 after he kidnapped the child from his Sparwood home, triggering an Amber Alert and a Canada-wide search.
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