High-risk Vancouver sex offender arrested hours after his release from prison

A high-risk sex offender, previously convicted of multiple violent crimes involving children, was arrested only hours after his most recent release after breaching release conditions.

Source: Vancouver Police Department

A high-risk sex offender, previously convicted of multiple violent crimes involving children, was arrested only hours after his most recent release after breaching release conditions.

Despite a high likelihood of re-offending and a history of being a flight-risk, Hopley was released from Mission Institution Thursday morning, police said. He was then directed to reside in a Vancouver halfway house but police said he "refused (the) direction of his parole officer” and took off, leading to a Canada-wide warrant being issued and Hopley being promptly arrested by the Vancouver Police Department.

Hopley’s extensive rap sheet goes back to the 1980s: more recently in 2008, he was convicted of breaking and entering into a home and abducting a child from his foster family; before that, he was convicted of sexual assault of a five-year-old boy and assault of a woman in a parking lot; in 2011, Hopley abducted another child in southeastern B.C. leading to a six-year prison sentence.

Hopley also has a long history of breaching his release orders. In 2022, for instance, he breached one of his release orders by attending the Vancouver Public Library in Marpole while a children's storytime was taking place nearby. He further breached his release order by using the library’s computer system to access the internet, where he gawked at images of young boys.

A year later on November 4, 2023, Hopley fled his halfway house after removing his electronic monitoring bracelet leading to a ten-day manhunt.

While it proved short-lived, the public was not notified of his latest release until after he'd already taken off.

British Columbia Premier David Eby said he was "deeply disappointed" the Correctional Service of Canada did not provide notification of Hopley's release, particularly in the neighbourhood where he was sent to live.

Often speaking in lockstep with the former Trudeau government on key policy matters related to climate change and social progressiveness, Eby was uncharacteristically critical of the governing federal Liberal party at the time when speaking on the matter, lamenting that the public’s confidence in the justice system is "being tested right now.”

"We need the federal government to step up and ensure that things like this can't happen. It just doesn't make any sense to anybody,” Eby said.

Meanwhile, mere minutes after announcing Hopley's arrest, the Vancouver Police Department were busy issuing a new Canada-wide warrant for another individual described as a “high-risk offender.”

Like Hopley, Johnny Walkus, 37, also left his court-ordered halfway house on the same day he'd obtained statutory release

As of publication, Walkus remains at large.