Canada.com
Ishmael N. Daro
Monday, May 27, 2013
There may be a link between the alleged video showing Toronto Mayor Rob Ford inhaling from a crack pipe and a homicide investigation.
The Globe and Mail reported Monday that a “senior member” of the mayor’s office shared a tip with Toronto police about the video being linked with a homicide. The staffer received the information from another person in the office who got a tip shortly after Gawker and Toronto Star broke the news about the alleged video.
According to the Globe, the informant told police he or she knew “the address and unit number where the video was being held” and the video previously belonged “to an individual who may have been killed for its potentially valuable contents.”
Both Gawker and the Toronto Star ran their original stories about the alleged video with the above photo, which the reporters say was provided by the men trying to sell the video. The faces of those men are obscured, but the man on the far left wearing a black hooded jacket and holding a bottle is said to be 21-year-old Anthony Smith. Smith was shot and killed outside a Toronto nightclub March 28.
Gawker’s crowdfunding effort to buy the alleged video for $200,000 has raised over $180,000 so far but it’s unclear whether that goal will be reached before the campaign’s deadline on Tuesday. Even before the crack tape was linked to a murder investigation, Gawker editor John Cook said his organization had lost contact with the men selling the video.
The mayor has denied all allegations.
“I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine,” he told reporters at City Hall Friday.
Source: Canada.com