Arrest Made In Fatal Subway Stabbing
Posted April 19, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It was a case that baffled police. All they had to go on was some grainy security video, a few vanished witnesses and a young man found dead on a subway train.
But that was apparently enough to lead police to a suspect.
Authorities have confirmed they’ve arrested a 26-year-old Toronto man in connection with the frightening slaying of a man five years his junior.
Cops were trying to retrace the steps of 21-year-old Nick Brown, whose lifeless body was discovered on a subway car at Kennedy station last Friday.
Cops quickly realized he’d been stabbed to death at the Victoria Park station and transported to the final terminal on the line at the end of the night, just minutes before the system was shut down for the evening.
He was found by a worker clearing the cars.
Authorities had a shot of the person they believed was responsible, but it was far from ideal.
Out of focus security footage showed what appeared to be a man wearing a backpack leaving Vic Park station and disappearing out an exit.
Repeated pleas for witnesses whom cops were sure saw something were greeted by silence.
But then police upped the ante in the manhunt, asking Brown’s relatives to make an emotional public appeal for information and releasing video and updated shots of what they believed was the wanted man (top left).
Detectives painstakingly pored through hours of subway security tapes, trying to see where the victim or his killer got on board the system.
It’s not yet clear if all that helped lead them to John Paul Vallon, but he was taken into custody Thursday afternoon and charged with second degree murder.
Cops have yet to say what the motive for the slaying might have been.
Vallon will make his first court appearance Friday morning – the same day family and friends attend Brown’s funeral.
