Statement from Sgt. Richard Dugal regarding ongoing Sexual Assaults Investigation

(Ottawa) The Ottawa Police Service wishes to provide an update to the community on the linked sexual assaults investigation. Since the news conference of January 9, 2014, we received approximately 350 public tips.

We are thankful that people had the courage to contact police to report information or suspicions.

The investigative team continues to go through the public tips, assess them based on information we already know and determine an order of priority to address each of them.

We are taking this opportunity to say that the public tips have been very helpful to the ongoing investigation and we are renewing the call for people to call our tip line at 613-236-1222 ext. 4774 or Crime Stoppers at 613-233-8477.

Each piece of information is important to this investigation. Whether it is about a person who is suspected because of his resemblance to the two composites and descriptors, his intimate or personal behaviors, previous incidents, reported or not.

Since September 2013, we have identified over 120 persons of interest through public tips, police canvassing, crime analysis or other investigative avenues.

The investigating team wishes to express its appreciation to the men who have been identified through tips and are cooperating with our investigative process.

In a large-scale investigation such as this one, it is as important to be able to eliminate the people who have surfaced through public tips as persons of interest; as it is to identify the person responsible. The Ottawa Police do this through a professional, methodical and thorough process.

The team continues to work diligently on each reported case of sexual assault to determine if more cases are linked to the three confirmed linked cases. At this point in time, we have not made any more links.

The best way for Ottawa Police to determine if they are linked or not, is to identify the person responsible for each of them.

To that end, we would like to draw the public’s attention once again to the video images of the Draper avenue sexual assault from late March 2013. We have confirmed that this is the man responsible for that incident; however we have yet to identify him.

The images are of good quality and someone should be able to recognize the suspect from these pictures. If you suspect you know this man, please call our tip line at 613-236-1222, ext. 4774 or Crime Stoppers at 613-233-8477.

We are also asking the public to look at the image of an important witness to the sex assault that occurred on January 5, 2014 on Chapman Mills Drive. This witness was captured by video surveillance in a nearby store around the time of the incident.
The witness is described as a Caucasian male with dark facial hair. He was wearing a dark puffy jacket with zippers, a toque and light coloured pants

If you know this person, or you recognize yourself, please call our tip line at 613-236-1222, ext. 4774 or Crime Stoppers at 613-233-8477.

The investigative team is committed to solving these crimes, and once again we ask Ottawa residents to continue to provide us with tips to achieve this.”

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