CSI North Bay?

It’s not quite CSI Miami, but the North Bay Police Service has used DNA analysis to solve a car theft which took place in the city last January.

A vehicle had been stolen then from the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation.

Soon after that a break-in had occurred at Cyclops Video, on Gormanville Road, in which a vehicle was used to damage the front of the store, allowing the culprits entry, a police report then had stated.

Cst. Steve Trahan recovered a piece of a licence plate frame at the scene. Two people were later arrested in relation to the crime.

Blood stains found
Ivan Ryman, forensic identification officer with the North Bay Police Service, entered the picture when the vehicle stolen in January is recovered and brought to police headquarters.

"I was checking the vehicle for finger prints,” said Ryman, a 10-year veteran with the service, "and I noted what appeared to be blood stains on the right front passenger door.”

Ryman swabbed the stains and sent them to the Centre for Forensic Sciences, in Toronto, for DNA analysis.

“They wouldn’t accept them, because they won’t analyse blood stains found in stolen vehicles, because stolen vehicle cases don’t meet their criteria for analysis," Ryman said, “but break and enters do.”

Vehicle involved in break and enter
Further examination of the vehicle led Ryman to discover the remains of a broken licence plate frame.

“I took the piece Cst. Trahan had picked up, and found it perfectly matched the remnant on the vehicle, and that allowed me to submit the blood sample swabs to Toronto, since we now had a vehicle involved in a break and enter,” Ryman said.

Sure enough when CFS analysed the swab, they hit upon a match, and sent it on to the national DNA data bank in Ottawa.

Another match was made there and the blood found in the vehicle turned out to belong to a North Bay man with a lengthy record.

“He had been involved in the Cyclops break-in and hadn’t even been in the picture because the other two guys hadn’t given him up,” Ryman said

DNA analysis in its infancy
Tyler Beilby, 23, of Second Avenue East, was charged Tuesday with possession of stolen property over $5,000, and has a court date Dec. 2.

“He obviously cut himself going into the video store, but the DNA nailed him because it has no short-term expiry,” Ryman said.

The suspect likely had to submit a DNA sample after being convicted for a previous crime, Ryman added.

While DNA analysis is still “in its infancy,” Ryman said, hits will start “falling out of the trees” in the future as samples are submitted by people who weren’t in the data bank before.

It’s like having a lien on a vehicle,” Ryman said. “Eventually somebody’s got to pay.”