VANCOUVER – Vancouver police released a few seconds of grainy cellphone video Monday in the hopes of identifying the apartment in which it was shot, where they believe an unidentified young boy may have been assaulted last year.
It was an unusual public plea made all the more mysterious by the lack of information released, though police stressed they don’t believe the boy was injured or is currently in any danger. Police have yet to confirm whether the boy was, in fact, assaulted.
Const. Lindsey Houghton said a police force from another province uncovered the cellphone video during an unrelated investigation, and then tracked the phone’s provenance to the Vancouver area.
The video, shot at night in what appears to be a ground-floor or basement suite, shows a tour of a largely empty suite, and there are no people in the clip.
That unnamed police force came across information that led them to believe a young boy, likely around two years old, was assaulted in the same residence in August of last year, said Houghton. Police don’t know which city suite is in, but believe it is somewhere in the Lower Mainland.
Two men of Somali decent were believed to have been with the boy at the time of the alleged assault. Police don’t know the identity of the boy or the Somali men, said Houghton, but they don’t believe either of the two men were a parent or caregiver. The boy is white, he said.
Houghton declined to reveal the police force that passed along the information, the nature of the other investigation or why police believe an assault took place.
The assault wasn’t captured on video, said Houghton, and there were no witnesses.
“We don’t know who anyone involved in this is; we don’t know who the boy is,” said Houghton.
“If we can find out where this suite is, then we can go and look at, perhaps, occupancy records, we can speak to past tenants, managers and find out who rented that suite back in 2010 when we believe that this assault occurred. Then we can start to identify people … and get some answers and make sure this boy is safe.”
While Houghton would not reveal what police believe happened to the boy, he said the child wasn’t injured and wasn’t sexually assaulted.
“We are not talking about a sexual assault and we don’t believe the child suffered any lasting physical harm,” said Houghton.
He added that the boy’s parents aren’t suspects.
“We do not know if the caregivers or parents even know about this case or know about this residence ,” he said.
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On the web: http://youtu.be/Id-IjTRsoR4
Local news from metronews.ca/vancouver
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