A Chilliwack man’s extensive home security system may help to solve a recent homicide.
Rob Iezzi has more than half a dozen security camera’s set up to deter thieves and trespassers at his Reece Avenue home. For years he’s tracked people stealing bikes, he’s witnessed muggings, fist fights, dangerous driving, even people doing drugs in his back yard.
While his cameras are generally aimed at his own property, some angles take in adjacent streets.
So when Jose Martin Torres was shot and killed in a Williams Street house in the early hours of Sept. 3, there was certainly a chance a person or a getaway car would be captured on tape.
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READ: Victim named in Sunday’s homicide in Chilliwack
Sure enough, four seconds after 4:15 a.m., the sound of a pop can be heard on the footage from a camera aimed at the front of his house, but that includes the intersection of Williams and Reece.
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Then one minute and 53 seconds later, just after the sound of a roaring engine, a silver car – possibly a Honda or an Acura – is seen driving north on Williams.
Iezzi said RCMP officers arrived at the scene of the crime seven seconds after 4:22 a.m. and an ambulance left the scene at 4:49:43.
That night he went outside and saw an officer with an assault rifle whom he asked if he should be worried.
“He said ‘No, go back inside,'” Iezzi said. “I asked if there were shots fired and he told me he couldn’t divulge that information. I told him I have a video where you can hear shots.”
He also later took footage of an RCMP drone flying around the neighbourhood.
Iezzi has long had his eye on the house where the homicide occurred saying it is a known drug house. People on bikes are seen coming and going making drops or pick-ups to other individuals in cars around the corner, sometimes right in front of his house.
The RCMP’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT) was on the scene early on Sept. 3 and the final officers left in the evening on Sept. 6.
“Immediately the bikes are back,” Iezzi said Sept. 7 in the morning. “I thought things were getting better around here.”
Iezzi was in the news a few years ago when his extensive surveillance and his frustration with local crime came to a head with him posting incidents on social media.
He posted numerous videos to YouTube, including one of a persistent cigarette butt thief who returned night after night to raid their outdoor ashtrays.
In another he has footage (from the same vantage point as the alleged homicide getaway) of he and his partner shooting paintball guns at a thief taking off on a bike.
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IHIT does have the video footage from his house on Sept. 3, although no arrests have been made and Iezzi said some neighbours are now somewhat scared.
And he isn’t sleeping too well, in part because he’s watching footage from the two new video cameras he installed the day after the killing.
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