Peter Elie. (Screen capture via YouTube)
A 27-year-old has been arrested by Toronto, Canada, police in connection with the brutal murder of a beloved DJ, found dead in the laundry room of his apartment block.
Peter Elie, 52, was found murdered early Thursday morning (May 14) after emergency services responded to a small fire in an apartment building on Balliol Street near Yonge Street and Davisville Avenue.
Law enforcement charged Rico Harvey, 27, with second-degree murder. He was taken into custody Friday.
Detectives added, according to CP24, that the pair had no known prior connection and motivation for the killing remains unknown.
What happened to Peter Elie?
Elie’s roommate claimed that the victim had gone down to the second floor to do laundry but never returned. Moreover, resident of the midtown apartment complex told police they heard “screaming and yelling” early Thursday morning.
“Silence” followed, witnesses said, before smoke began to billow out of the laundry room and the fire brigade were called to the scene. Elie was found with visible signs of trauma.
Investigators later released building surveillance footage of a suspect. They theorise that Harvey and Elie did not know one another until the morning of the incident.
Toronto LGBT+ community remember ‘sweetheart of a guy’.
Members of the community came together outside the clubs in the downtown gay neighbourhood he used to spin discs on, placing potted flowers next to a framed photograph of Elie while wearing face masks.
Capturing a moment of mourning snarled by the coronavirus pandemic, loved ones remembered him as a “sweetheart of a guy” and as as a pillar in the Church and Wellesley communities.
“He was definitely part of the makeup of our community,” Elie’s friend Jason Pelletier told CP24 earlier this week.
“Something that brings us together, especially in this community, was our music and he was the guy who pressed play for the party to start.
“When I think of his last moments they were not good and for somebody who so nice and positive and such a force in our community to go out that way is just devastating.”
“He is the friendliest person you’ll ever meet,” Krys Cee, the manager of Crews & Tango, told CBC.
“When I heard the news, it was like a punch to the gut.”