arrested Devlin on Thursday<\/a> near Toronto\u2019s Union Station.\u00a0<\/p>\nDevlin faces charges of second degree murder and indignity to a dead body in connection with the death of 30-year-old Mikaila Straatsma, whose body was found on June 19.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Blandford said Sault police may have tracked Devlin down a few different ways.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey’re following up on leads, so they could have got a tip from someone in that area,\u201d Blandford said, adding that police may have been in Toronto interviewing that person.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tip may have been so recent that it caused them to be in that area looking and they found him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could be a case where they had information not from Toronto specifically, but they’re familiar with the case and they may have had past dealings with the suspect . . . so they knew him more than just from a photo,\u201d Blandford said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In that case police may have gone to Toronto because they would have been in a better position to identify him in person based on that information.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople change their appearance and photographs don’t always give you those nuances because they’re one-dimensional,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Blandford said police may have also been tracking Devlin using other means.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt may have been a case of where they had tracked him down, for example, with banking information if he used a debit or credit card and that led them to the area.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s all part of the investigative process and there’s a number of different factors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s hard to say which would have been the one that brought them down there, but clearly because of the severity of it being a homicide, they would certainly be digging into every possible lead they had,\u201d Blandford said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He also discussed why the Sault Police Service only recently identified Devlin as a murder suspect.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Devlin went missing on June 17, two days before Straatsma\u2019s body was found.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Aug. 27 police executed a search warrant in Devlin\u2019s apartment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Oct. 29, police announced that Devlin was wanted on a Canada-wide warrant and he was last seen on June 17 near Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to make sure that you have as much of an airtight case as possible,\u2019 Blandford said.<\/p>\n
Police need to not only determine what is evidence, but also make sure they\u2019ve ruled out any unnecessary evidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou’re trying to not leave any holes because if you have a gap in your investigation, that leaves the potential for reasonable doubt when you go to trial,\u201d Blandford said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Devlin made his first court appearance<\/a> yesterday and will return to court on Nov. 20.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A police expert says the Sault Police Service did good work in the investigation that led to Scott…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":363085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2147,50],"class_list":{"0":"post-365757","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115517081780487940","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}