Was man’s killing a warning gone wrong?
Tactics more stupid than professional, detective says
Perhaps Patrick Santos’s killers only wanted to give him a taste of humiliation when they ambushed him in the backyard of his father’s home on Bridlington Street near Bellamy and Ellesmere Roads in Scarborough.
They bound him, beat him, tortured him with a knife and duct taped his face before leaving him to be found by his father hours later.
By then, Santos, 21, had suffocated early in the morning of Sept. 17, 2006.
“It looked like they were just trying to give him a scare,” said acting Det. Sgt. Stephen Smith in a video posted online.
Smith was quick to say in an interview that Santos should not be considered a gangster.
“Patrick was absolutely not a gang member,” Smith said.
Santos, who worked as an apprentice mechanic in Mississauga, wasn’t able to breathe because of the tape over his mouth and nose.
He couldn’t move because of the plastic ties binding his wrists and ankles.
His father saw the lifeless body on the back patio as he let out the family dog at 7:20 that morning.
His mother got the news as she prepared to go to church.
Police say they are confident that Santos knew his attackers and that the motive for the crime is a personal one.
Perhaps Santos even thought, until he lost consciousness, that someone would eventually free him.
“I 100 per cent think this was personal,” Smith said. “Everyone that was involved in this would have known Patrick.”
Santos was a stocky five-footeight and would not have been an easy man to overpower. That said, he was subdued so quickly that he couldn’t make noise to alert his parents and neighbours.
“They must have overpowered him right away,” Smith said.
“Somehow they kept this very quiet.”
The attackers clearly knew Santos’s address and habits.
He returned home from a downtown club early that Sunday morning, but when he arrived around 4:30 a.m., the usual route he took to enter the home was blocked, steering him to another entrance.
That’s where the attackers were waiting in the darkness.
“They knew his patterns and that he would be coming home at this particular time,” Smith said. “It is our belief that the killers were waiting for him.”
His hands were zip-tied, and there was blood on one of the ties, Smith said.
It indicates the blood is from someone of mixed European and African heritage, Smith said.
The DNA doesn’t match with anything in a national data bank, Smith said.
“We have the killers’ DNA and are looking at any advances in science that may assist us in the investigation,” Smith said.
Santos was beaten and his body was marked with superficial knife wounds.
Police have connected Santos to a group of people involved in a relatively sophisticated credit and debit card scam called skimming.
It involved obtaining cash by using other peoples’ debit cards and PIN numbers.
Smith dismissed the suggestion that Santos was killed by sophisticated organized criminals.
A real gangster would have just shot him if they wanted him dead, and the up-close method of attack had too many ways of going wrong for a professional criminal.
The duct taping of his mouth and nose seems more stupid than professional.
“There’s way too many variables there for someone who’s a professional,” Smith said.
I 100 per cent think this was personal. Everyone that was involved in this would have known Patrick.”
ACTING DET. SGT. STEPHEN SMITH