Calgary’s bloody year takes toll on investigators
City’s 27 homicides this year have come in bunches, adding to challenge for police
Summer was certainly no vacation for Calgary’s homicide investigators.
Faced with a mountain of new files — 18 of the city’s 27 homicides were committed since June 2 — keeping up professionally and personally has been a challenge for Calgary police.
Tasked with tackling the city’s most heinous crimes is the Calgary police major crimes unit — a close-knit cadre of investigators who make solving murders their day-to-day routine.
And that, says Insp. Martin Schiavetta, takes a toll on even the most seasoned detective.
“In the first three days of a fresh homicide, they may see their families very little,” he said.
“That’s how demanding the work is.”
Schiavetta, a veteran officer, is no stranger to difficult cases, having served in a variety of units including gangs, drugs and organized crime.
“One of the challenges is when you get multiple homicides that are all independent of each other — each demands the same amount of resources,” Schiavetta said. “It stretches all of our resources, which are finite.”
For city homicide investigators, 2017 started like most others — spending the first half of the year working through a relatively manageable caseload.
Already elbow-deep in the May 21 double-murder of Colin Reitberger and Anees Amr — both shot to death in front of horrified shoppers in a southeast grocery store parking lot — investigators were handed back-to-back murders in the first few days of June, kicking off what would be a bloody five months.
Just as the Friday evening rush hour was reaching its peak on June 2, Bow Valley College nursing student Nicholas Nwonye was attacked by a knife-wielding man on a platform at the City Hall LRT station.
Suffering grievous stab wounds, the 46-year-old father of three was taken to Foothills Hospital, where he died.
A little more than 24 hours later, two masked gunmen opened fire on a basketball game outside the Bob Bahan recreation centre in Forest Heights, striking four people.
Taken to nearby Peter Lougheed Hospital by friends, 22-year-old Rinato Toy — the believed target of the shooting — wouldn’t survive the evening.
That was followed by two more killings that month and five more in July — including the Sage Hill quadruple murder.
After a two-month respite interrupted by the Sept. 6 stabbing death of Valeri Lomakine, nine more homicides would drop on investigators’ desks from Oct. 3 on — including the death of little Ivy Wick, a file passed to homicide by the child-abuse unit after the three-year-old girl’s death was declared suspicious.
Daily excursions into the darkest corners of human depravity takes its toll, a real and ever-present concern for unit commanders, including Schiavetta.
“As a supervisor, that’s a daily concern and certainly a daily priority for me — ensuring my members maintain not only their physical welfare, but also mental,” he explained.
“When you have multiple investigations going on at the same time, it puts a lot of stress on investigators and their families.”
If October was taxing for his team, November would set a new bar.
Less than 24 hours after Randeep Dhaliwal was found beaten to death inside a Pineside Place N.E. home on Nov. 3, the body of skateboarder Olara Obina was discovered in a northwest Calgary alleyway.
That was followed by two unrelated murders within seven hours on Nov. 15 — the stabbing death of 15-year-old Leslie Sunwalk at a residence on Maddock Drive N.E., and Humberto Panameno, found dead after an apparent knife and bear spray attack inside his Forest Lawn home.
“That was certainly unique — certainly uncommon for us,” Schiavetta said. “When situations like that come up, it’s extremely demanding — we really rely on all members of the service to pull together.”
As depicted in crime shows like The First 48, the initial hours of a case generally set the tone of the rest of the investigation.
“The First 72 is probably more accurate,” Schiavetta said.
“When a fresh homicide comes in, we try to front-load the investigation. There’s so much evidence that is perishable.”
That includes surveillance footage, witness statements and neighbourhood inquiries — valuable evidence that needs to be collected promptly.
Detectives work hard to ensure older cases aren’t left by the wayside as new ones come in.
“For every homicide that we don’ t lay charges on initially, those still need to be investigated,” he said.
Despite fictionalized police work shown on television in which forensic evidence is analyzed in the span of a commercial break, realworld investigations are exacting and excruciatingly slow.
The heavy caseload hasn’t impinged on results, however.
Out of 2017’s 27 homicides, charges have been laid in 18, including last week’s arrests in the April murder of 44-year-old Tim Voytilla.
Of the remaining nine, Schiavetta said investigators are close to laying charges in some of them.
For anybody who plies their trade solving homicides, closing a case is less of a professional victory than a personal one.
“We are, after all, working for the victims’ families,” Schiavetta said. “We want to make sure our investigations are thorough. No matter how many homicides we get.”