A young boy's Christmas gift was taken from him while riding a Toronto Transit Commission bus on Monday, but the surveillance camera installed to record crimes like this was not working.
Wesley Armstrong was on a crowded bus after school when a thief took a new Playstation Portable video game unit out of his pocket.
"I was holding on to the pole and the brakes were going on," Armstrong said. "And he grabs it out of my pocket and he (says) 'be quiet or else I'll kill you.'"
His mother said it was an upsetting experience for her son.
"Wesley was very, very shaken up about it," Andrea Younker said. "He was upset, he was crying."
But there was hope. The 11-year-old boy thought the newly installed video camera on the bus captured the thief's picture.
When Younker spoke with the TTC supervisor on the scene the mother and son learned the camera was installed but no hooked-up.
"He said that there was a problem with the union and the legal department (at the TTC)," Younker said.
CTV's Galit Solomon contacted the TTC to verify if a dispute exists. However, by noon Friday she had not received a response.
Younker believes if the camera had been functioning it would have provided police with valuable information to find a suspect. Without video footage she says investigators have very little to go on.
Cameras installed
In October 2006 the TTC started to outfit buses and streetcars with the high-resolution cameras. By the end of 2007 they expected to have cameras installed on 1750 vehicles at a cost of almost $17 million.
Cameras were part of a larger safety overhaul of TTC vehicles. Another $2.7 million project was approved at the same time to install protective barriers for drivers.
Cameras and protective shields were demanded by the union in 2006. It was a central issue in a wildcat strike that shut down the system for a day in May of that year.
With a report from CTV's Galit Solomon
