Police tracing the last days Michael Zehaf-Bibeau spent in Ottawa before his attack on Parliament Hill have seized security camera recordings from a strip mall on Bank Street.
Zehaf-Bibeau, 32, visited the ServiceOntario outlet at 1800 Bank St. in an attempt to transfer the ownership of the Toyota Corolla he arranged to purchase through the online classified site, Kijiji.
While trying to complete the sale, he appears to have spent some time at the mall, possibly picking up a pizza for lunch.
On Friday, the RCMP visited the mall to obtain video recordings captured by the cameras mounted on the exterior of the building.
The videos could be helpful in establishing where Zehaf-Bibeau obtained the Winchester hunting rifle he used the next day to kill a sentry at the National War Memorial and wound a House of Commons security guard.
At the very least, the recordings could show he didn’t have the rifle with him when he took ownership of the vehicle in the parking lot of the mall.
It is unclear if police obtained video from inside SerivceOntario, but they did find further recordings from security cameras mounted inside Wireless Rev, a cellphone shop two doors down ServiceOntario.
The police also spent time viewing security video made from a financial services firm on the opposite side of the mall. Its cameras, however, were pointed at the automated teller machine and didn’t show enough of parking lot to be useful.
The Corolla that Zehaf-Bibeau abandoned on Wellington Street, just outside the fence around Parliament Hill, had a Domino’s pizza box on the front passenger seat.
Staff working at Domino’s in the mall didn’t recognize a picture of Zehaf-Bibeau. The owner of the franchise, Fadi Abou Ajjar, refused to say whether he had provided police with video recordings from the cameras in his shop.
Also found on the abandoned car was an order form for 2015 promotional calendars, junk mail that had been sent to a dentist’s office that had once been located in the mall, next to the Domino’s.
The form was taped into the back window of the Toyota and at a distance gives the appearance of a dealer’s certificate or temporary licence.
It is unclear how he obtained the order form, as the dental office closed several years ago and moved to a new location.
Because Zehaf-Bibeau was unable to produce enough identification, ServiceOntario wouldn’t give him license plates for the car. He drove off without them after paying the seller $650 in cash, according to the seller’s daughter.
A record of calls made on the pay phone inside the ServiceOntario outlet could provide police more clues about whom he contacted the day before the shooting.
According to the car seller’s daughter, Zehaf-Bibeau left ServiceOntario to obtain a prepaid phone card and came back to the use the pay phone. He had an angry conversation with someone on the phone, her father had said.
The seller of the Toyota removed the plates the vehicle and gave the keys to Zehaf-Bibeau.
There are several businesses across Bank Street from the mall that sell prepaid phone cards but none of the staff members remember seeing Zehaf-Bibeau when shown his photograph.
Zehaf-Bibeau was able to drive to Mont-Tremblant to visit his aunt that evening, according to media reports, apparently without police noticing the car didn’t have either front or rear licence plates.
Other items seen inside the car include a Ventura sleeping bag cover, a can of Off! insect repellent spray, and an apple.
