A hoodie-clad man kills a high-profile CEO outside a busy hotel in New York, the city almost entirely covered with surveillance cameras, and manages to slip neatly through the fingers of city cops — leaving them scratching their heads.
The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in America’s largest city has sent chills to the US authorities who think the shooter might have left New York and could be anywhere.
Though the New York Police has mounted search for the mysterious assassin, the density of digital footage has overwhelmed the cops, who now have to virtually scrub through every nook and corner the killer had been before and after he executed the murder.
Police believe the suspect arrived in New York City 10 days before the killing – on November 24, a law enforcement official told CNN.
The cops are revisiting countless hours of video footage in hopes get hands on more clues that could assist them in nabbing the shooter.
Throughout his stay, the man appeared on camera numerous times, however, he always kept his hood over his head and donned a mask in public.
“While the gunman meticulously planned many parts of his crime and getaway, he might be surprised by ‘how far the NYPD is going to go in collecting video,” former NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey told CNN.
“And they’re not just going to take it from the crime scene to his escape route. They’re actually going to rewind now, and they’re going to try to account for all 10 days that he spent in New York City. And I don’t think that he anticipates that,” Corey added.
Why the delay?
The only photo of the suspect that cops have with his mask down may not be sufficient as experts believe “facial recognition software doesn’t always link a suspect’s face and identity”.
“Most Americans may believe that law enforcement has images on everybody in the United States. That’s very much not true. If he happens to not be a resident of New York who happens to not have been arrested before, odds are he’s not going to be in their criminal database or their mugshot repository,” Donnie Scott, CEO of IDEMIA Group told CNN.
Scott said: “So what’s likely happening across all law enforcement is they’re looking for this image in their local systems to see if this perpetrator exists in their galleries.
Why can’t driver’s license help?
Responding to queries about why the police can’t cross-check the assassin’s face with driver’s license photos from the Department of Motor Vehicles, Scott explains to CNN that “It’s a legal permissioning process. The state of New York does not have access to the DMV database for law enforcement purposes by statute,” Scott said. “It requires cooperation and information sharing and a reason and willingness by the respective agencies to be allowed to share that by law.”
Will DNA help narrow the probe?
Investigators have recovered possible DNA evidence from the abandoned cell phone and from a water bottle they believe the suspect may have sipped from. The potential DNA evidence was turned over to a lab for testing, a senior law enforcement official told CNN.
However, the presence of DNA data might not be enough to identify the suspect.
“If they’re able to pull DNA … but there’s no match to those DNA (samples), it’s going to be very difficult,” Callahan Walsh, co-host of “America’s Most Wanted” told CNN.
“They can bring in familial DNA, but that takes a little bit longer to process,” Walsh said. “There also has to be a match in a database somewhere from one of his family members.”