THUNDER BAY — As investigators with the Thunder Bay Police Service continue to seek information relating to the unsolved murder of Conrad Bannon two years later, major crime investigations have taken on greater complexity as the ‘new normal’ for crime often spans the province or entire country.
“There are complexities,” said Thunder Bay Police Service Det. Insp. Jeremy Pearson. “It does add an element of difficulty to an investigation when you are dealing with people that are not necessarily known in the community, that may be up here using street names, pseudonyms of another sort, may not be known to the individuals involved in interactions with them as part of the illicit drug trade.”
Last Saturday marked the two-year anniversary of the death of 31-year-old Conrad Joseph Bannon, whose body was found inside an apartment complex in the 300 block of Amelia Street West on Nov. 4, 2021.
Police were originally dispatched to the area for reports of gunshots and it was determined Bannon, who was pronounced dead at the scene, sustained injuries from a shooting.
A 17-year-old youth was arrested in Cambridge, Ont., in January 2022 and charged with first-degree murder. Those charges have since been withdrawn at the request of the Crown.
Pearson said the investigation remains ongoing and given the recent anniversary of Bannon’s death, police are once again appealing to the public for any information that could assist investigators.
“We believe there are members of the community who may have information that may seem insignificant to them, that may have been sitting with them and stewing for these two years, we ask that they contact our investigators and speak to us or if they wish to remain anonymous to contact Crime Stoppers to provide that information so we can purse this investigation to conclusion and give the grieving family some closure,” Pearson said.
Bannon’s death is believed to be connected to the illicit drug trade with connections to the Greater Toronto Area, which is something that has become much more common in major crime investigations in recent years.
“However, we are not blind to the fact that there are local connections in both this trade and individuals originating in that area,” Pearson said.
But with criminal activity now often involving individuals from other parts of the province and country, investigations are becoming much more complex and police services are relying more and more on the cooperation between agencies.
“Our inter-agency cooperation with the local services in the Greater Toronto Area and the Ontario Provincial Police has been essential to these investigations and the overwhelmingly successful conclusion we’ve seen,” Pearson said.
“Sometimes it is simply information sharing, sometimes it is as complex as arranging for arrests or takedowns. Some of those may be high risk and involve the use of specialized teams. We have benefited tremendously from those relationships and the willingness of other agencies to assist us and we have reciprocated in kind.”
While Pearson did not have exact numbers, he did say that in the last 10 years it is now much more common for the Thunder Bay Police Service to execute arrests on individuals wanted for crimes in Southern Ontario.
“We’ve seen the influx of people from other parts of the province and country into Thunder Bay for some time now,” he said. “It is becoming more pronounced and so I would say the incidents are increasing.”
And this is part of a trend the city and region has been seeing for the last 10 years, with the illicit drug trade preying on vulnerable members of the community and bringing increased violent crime.
“We have an influx of people into the community who are here to sell drugs and with that comes violence, with that comes all the social ills for people who are struggling with substance misuse disorders. I would argue we are at the centre of that phenomenon right now,” Pearson said.
“The situation now is sort of what has naturally evolved over the last 10 years. That marked change in the last three to five, where we see a completely different element of crime in the city.”
