Image: Randall Hopley / VPD

By Alyssa Conti

SEX OFFENDER RECAPTURED

Police re-arrest high-risk sex offender hours after release from Mission Institution

May 23, 2025 | 9:13 AM

MISSION — Police have re-arrested 59-year-old sex offender Randall Hopley, only hours after his release from Mission Institution Thursday morning (May 22).

Hopley was released from prison under directions to stay at a halfway house in Vancouver. He refused those orders from his parole officer and left the halfway house.

“A Canada-wide warrant was issued, and Hopley was arrested by Vancouver Police,” wrote the Vancouver Police Department.

The high-risk offender pulled a similar stunt over a year ago, when he left his halfway house and cut off his ankle monitor in November 2023.

A history of sexual offences

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Court documents show he had a “troubling inability to control his sexual offending against younger children, mostly boys”. He was previously convicted of three sexual offences when he was 16 and 17, as well as a fourth conviction in 1985, when he was 19.

Between 2007 and 2011, Hopley had also been convicted of breaking and entering with intent twice. The first time was when he tried, unsuccessfully, to take a 10-year-old Cranbrook boy from his bedroom.

“The judge who sentenced Mr. Hopley in that case did not find that the offence was sexually motivated. Mr. Hopley was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment and three years of probation.”

The second time was when he kidnapped a three-year-old boy from Sparwood.

“Mr. Hopley said he committed this crime to ‘get back at the police’,” stated the document. “He made this comment to the psychiatrist who assessed him in 2012, and she noted that he had also said this to others, but that he did not explain what he meant by it.”

He had been the subject of a Canada-wide manhunt in 2023 before turning himself in 10 days later.