Chilling home surveillance video from north Surrey’s Port Kells neighbourhood captured a man wandering the streets on the evening Tori Dunn, 30, was fatally attacked in her own home.
At 9:23 p.m. on June 16, a stranger in a light-coloured hoodie is seen walking across 182A Street towards a construction site, before heading south.
Ten minutes later, the same man returns, walking north with his hands in his pockets — in the direction of Dunn’s home at the end of the cul de sac.
“He looked very nonchalant, he’s wearing a hoodie,” said neighbour Fiona Longo.
Charlize Trudgian said she saw footage of the man walking down the middle of her side street before he stepped onto the sidewalk in front of her house and took off his hoodie.
“He had his hood over his head and then I did see him ditch his hoodie behind the mailbox and then continue walking in front of our house and then up the street,” Trudgian told Global News in an interview. “It was quite scary.”
After police vehicles rushed to the scene at 9:56 p.m., the man is seen again without the hoodie, walking away southbound on 182A Street as an RCMP SUV flies by.
“He darted in between some houses and wasn’t running,” Longo told Global News.
The man is seen ducking between houses as a fire truck roars by.
Clad in a white t-shirt and black toque, his face is clearly captured by cameras at 9:57 p.m. before he casually strolls back onto the street.
“If you’re running, it looks suspicious I guess, right,” said Longo. “Whereas if you’re walking, it’s not so suspicious.”
The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT) said at approximately 10:00 p.m. Sunday, Surrey RCMP responded to a home in the 9800-block of 182A Street and found a woman with life-threatening injuries.
Dunn, who owned and operated a landscaping company with her partner, died in hospital.
With help from a police dog team, IHIT said a suspect in the “senseless act” was arrested nearby and remains in custody on an unrelated charge.
Neighbours said a knife was also recovered in the area.
Trudgian wonders why the suspect ended up in their neighbourhood, which she said is still under construction with few developed houses and no bus stops anywhere near it.
“We really are kind of in the middle of nowhere and we have so many questions and not a lot of answers happening right now for us,” said Trudgian.
Global News has learned the suspect, whom we are not naming until charges are laid, is on probation and had been in and out of custody in recent months.
While on bail on robbery charges, the 41-year-old is accused of stabbing a woman near a Surrey SkyTrain station three weeks before Dunn’s homicide.
Longo said when police requested her surveillance footage to try and piece together an investigational timeline, they also divulged details on the suspect.
“The fact that this guy was out when he had committed quite a few crimes, it’s just brutal.”
The suspect is scheduled to appear in Surrey provincial court on June 25 on unrelated charges of robbery and aggravated assault.
Dunn’s family, who will be honouring Tori at a 7 p.m. vigil Saturday at Surrey Bend Regional Park, believes she was the victim of a random home invasion.
A memorial service for Dunn is planned for Wednesday, June 26 in Surrey. An online fundraiser for Dunn has been created as well.