Police use DNA technology to create sketch of sex assault suspect
Waterloo Regional Police use phenotyping for first time to create image
WATERLOO REGION — Waterloo Regional Police have a released an image created from the DNA of a suspect in two sexual assault cases involving children.
The image, released Tuesday, was created by Parabon NanoLabs, a DNA technology company based in Virginia. The company specializes
in DNA phenotyping, which predicts a person’s physical appearance and ancestry from DNA evidence.
This is the first time the Waterloo Regional Police Service has used this type of technology.
“We’re trying to exhaust all investigative leads that we have at our disposal,” said Staff Sgt. Deborah McBride. “We learned about Parabon and that this process could be
available for us to use, so we sent them a DNA sample.”
Using the DNA evidence, the company pulled together appearance attributes to create a sketch of what the suspect may have looked like at 25 years of age.
“Since you can’t tell age through DNA, it’s pretty much a 25-year-old person that they always use,” said Parabon spokesperson Paula Armentrout. Police services are able to use age progression software on the image if they want to, she added.
The computer-generated image
shows a white man of southeast European ancestry. Using percentiles, the sketch indicates there’s a 91 per cent certainty the man has fair skin, a 73 per cent chance he has green/ blue eyes, and a 97.9 per cent likelihood he has blond/brown hair.
The DNA also shows there’s a 93 per cent certainty he has zero or few freckles. In the past, police have also described the
suspect as being between five feet 10 inches and six feet tall, with a skinny build.
Police are trying to identify a person of interest in two sexual assault cases. One took place on Oct. 27, 2017, at 7 p.m. when a sixyear-old girl was sexually assaulted in a stairwell of an apartment building at 318 Patricia Ave., Kitchener.
Police believe the suspect frequented the building or area.
The other assault occurred on Oct. 20, 2013,
between 3 and 5 p.m. in an apartment building at 429 Barrie St., Waterloo. Police believe the same man approached a four-year-old girl and sexually assaulted her.
Police are urging the person responsible for the assaults to come forward. They are also asking anyone with information about the incidents to call police at 519-570-9777, ext. 8661, or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.