New push begins to find suspect in 2002 murder of Windsor teen
Online campaign targets whereabouts of pizza parlour owner wanted by police
Amal Baroud is haunted by her final phone call with her son. On March 18, 2002, 18-year-old Riad Baroud said he had $40,000 and wanted to send her some money. But when she asked him how he came into so much cash, the Windsor teen said he was joking, Amal recalls.
Just more than a month later, Riad’s badly beaten and bound body was found in a Chatham-Kent woodlot.
A court later heard an allegation he stole $40,000 from his employer, Windsor pizza shop owner Savang Sychantha, who is charged with first-degree murder in the teen’s death. But police say Sychantha remains on the lam 17 years later.
“I blame myself. Why did I leave him alone? I should have been with him to protect him,” Amal Baroud said from Belgium, where she moved 10 months before her son was killed.
Baroud told Postmedia News about the fallout from her son’s slaying and the police search for Sychantha.
“I feel like, until now I like to hide the way my son died. I’m not angry that he died. I’m angry because of the way he died ... because he was in too much pain,” she said on the 17th anniversary of his death. “I still have the pain, I still live with it.”
Now, an organization that uses public awareness campaigns to draw attention to Canada’s most-wanted fugitives is preparing to roll out the second phase of its effort to help police track down Sychantha, 56, whom investigators say may be living in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver under an assumed identity.
The first phase of the campaign launched by Be On The Lookout (BOLO), a Montreal-based charity, involved targeting residents in select Canadian cities through Facebook and Twitter posts. Anyone with information about Sychantha was encouraged to contact police or Crime Stoppers.
“The eyes of the police are limited ... but the eyes of the public are very important,” BOLO director Maxime Langlois said. While the first phase of the campaign harnessed the power of social media, the next one could see Sychantha’s face plastered on billboards, bus shelters and leaflets, said Langlois.
“We’re currently reassessing what Phase 2 is going to be about, based on the tips that we’ve received,” he said.
Police acknowledge Sychantha may no longer be in Canada. “We have had some tips come in and we continue to work closely with BOLO,” OPP Det.-Insp. Randy Wright wrote in an email. “We are still exploring the possibility that he’s in those cities (Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal), but we have now begun to focus on overseas, as well.”
Police launched a homicide investigation after a road repair crew found Baroud’s remains off Vasik Line, near Highway 401 in Chatham-Kent on April 25, 2002. His hands and feet were bound with duct tape and he had a green garbage bag tied over his head. The teen’s shoes, some clothing and his identification had been removed. An autopsy revealed he died from blunt force trauma. Investigators obtained a nationwide arrest warrant for Sychantha, but he was believed to have fled to his native Laos — a country in Southeast Asia that doesn’t have an extradition agreement with Canada — before returning to Canada years later.
Baroud, who worked at Sychantha’s Windsor pizza parlour, stole $40,000 in cash and jewelry from a safe in his boss’s home while he was away at a wedding in March 2002, court heard during the 2003 trial of Cuong Menh Dao. The allegation came from Dao’s statement to police.
Dao, a fellow pizza parlour employee and Sychantha’s brotherin-law, was originally charged with first-degree murder. He pleaded guilty to accessory to murder after the fact and was sentenced to 11 months’ time served. According to information read in court at his trial, Dao had alerted Sychantha after spotting Baroud wearing some of the stolen jewelry. He last saw Baroud get into a white Toyota with Sychantha and two other men, supposedly heading to a drug deal on April 22, 2002, according to Dao’s police statement read to the court.
Dao told investigators that the next morning he drove Sychantha and his wife, Dao’s sister, to the airport to catch a flight for Laos, the court heard.
Amal Baroud and her three children, including a six-year-old Riad, came to Canada in 1990 as refugees from Palestine.
“I went there to live in peace and have a good life,” she said of Canada.
Her husband, Wahid Baroud, joined the family a year later, and the couple had two more children. But Wahid Baroud was deported three years later under a security certificate, an immigration law process for removing suspected terrorists and spies. In an interview years later with The Canadian Press, he said his deportation was related to his past involvement with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
The family patriarch acknowledged his work with the PLO, but denied planning or participating in any terrorist activities, according to the report.
Amal Baroud remained in Canada, raising their five children alone, before eventually joining her husband in Belgium, where he’d settled after spending 14 years in Sudan and bouncing around several European countries, Amal Baroud said.
Riad Baroud, however, stayed behind in Canada against his mother’s wishes, she said.
She described her son as “a sweet boy” who, as a teen, used the money he earned from his paper route to buy his family members treats and presents.
She remembers returning to Canada from a trip to Belgium and getting balloons with the words “Welcome back” scrawled on each one from her son.
Her final phone call with her son — a conversation she documented in her diary — left her with an uneasy feeling, she said.
“I felt something was going to be wrong and I cried,” she said. “After that, I tried to keep in touch with him, (but) he doesn’t answer the phone.”
The next time Amal Baroud saw her son was when she returned to Canada for his burial. The grieving mother is cautiously optimistic about the renewed police attention on finding Sychantha, but said his arrest won’t bring back her son. “I didn’t live a normal life,” she said.
WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT BE ON THE LOOKOUT (BOLO)
A law enforcement term (BOLO) to designate someone who is actively wanted.
Created by the Stephen Cretier Foundation headquartered in Montreal.
Worked with Canadian police forces to track down eight high-profile fugitives.
Last week BOLO added $50,000 to the $10,000 reward money for the arrest of Mohamud Abukar Hagi in connection with the 2008 Windsor shooting death of 21-year-old Luis Acosta-Escobar.
I’m not angry that he died. I’m angry because of the way he died ... because he was in too much pain. I still have the pain, I still live with it.