‘What the hell is that’: Saskatoon couple shocked to discover GPS tracker on truck

WATCH: The Saskatoon man who discovered a GPS tracker on his truck says he believes his girlfriend was the target.

The Saskatoon man who discovered a GPS tracker on his truck and triggered a developing police investigation says he believes his girlfriend was the target.

Daelyn Boettcher said he was doing the brakes on his truck in September when he noticed something under the fender that didn’t belong.

“I just so happened to look up and see,” he told CTV News in an interview Thursday. “‘What the hell is that?’”

He found what turned out to be a GPS tracker — a little black box with a SIM card that runs on the cellular network — fixed to his fender with black duct tape. He took it to police.

A few weeks later, Boettcher says investigators got in touch with him to let him know they tracked down a suspect.

“They were like, I don’t wanna freak you out or anything, but they came back to an extremely violent individual. Be careful, and we’ll let you know when we can tell you more.”

What followed was a complex investigation that eventually lead police to execute a search warrant at an apartment in the 2000 block of 20th Street West, where they arrested 46-year-old Marty Schira, and located a number of other trackers.

Schira now faces 29 charges, including multiple counts of harassment, mischief and intimidation.

There are believed to be multiple other victims involved and on Wednesday police advised people to stay on the lookout for unusual devices on their vehicles and report anything suspicious.

According to Boettcher, the apartment where Schira was arrested is mere blocks away from his girlfriend’s place of employment. He says she uses his truck about two times a week, and the couple found out through police Schira had been tracking them since the spring of 2024.

“So he knows where I live; where my girlfriend lives, where our parents live. He knows where we work. He knows our friends, he knows everything there is to know about us,” said Boettcher.

Once they found out police believed Schira was responsible, they started looking into his background. They were horrified to discover he had kidnapped and sexually assaulted a woman in Rosetown 20 years ago.

In June, 2003, wielding a sawed-off rifle, Schira forced a Rosetown woman into the box of his truck and covered her with a blanket before driving out of town, where he tied her hands behind her back and sexually assaulted her before taking her to Calgary and holding her captive in his apartment. She later managed to loosen her bonds and escape while he was in the bathtub.

Schira was sentenced to 14 years in federal prison.

Parole Board of Canada documents obtained by CTV News show Schira committed a number of violent acts while incarcerated. In 2011, he hit a fellow inmate at the Regional Psychiatric Centre in the head with a coffee pot, unprovoked, according to the parole board.

In March 2014, Schira was convicted of assault with a weapon and sentenced to two more years after stabbing a correctional officer in the forehead with a protractor, and twice in the hand.

Throughout his incarceration, the Parole Board of Canada elected to keep Schira behind bars. They repeatedly found he showed little accountability for his actions or insight into the risk factors for his offense.

“The Board is satisfied that, if released, you are likely to commit an offence causing serious harm to another person before the expiration of your sentence,” the board wrote in 2012, and reaffirmed three more times before Schira’s release.

Learning that police believe this is the man who was tracking his truck left Boettcher and his partner rattled.

“Jeeze, man, we lost hours of sleep. We were paranoid and just kind of thought, like, what if,” said Boettcher.

“You hear about this stuff happening, but you never think it’s going to happen to you.”

Schira is scheduled to appear in Saskatoon provincial court on February 5.