Man facing 12 charges connected to sex assaults on the DTES
Posted February 27, 2012 6:29 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Burnaby Mounties and Vancouver Police say a Surrey man has been charged with sexually assaulting four Downtown Eastside sex trade workers.
Shalendra Sharma, 43, is charged with 12 counts including sexual assault, confinement, and one count of kidnapping. Police believe Sharma picked up the women, took them to Burnaby and attacked them.
The two most recent attacks happened in December of last year. RCMP linked the attacks after those two women came to police.
“In particular, one of the woman provided us with a valuable, key piece of evidence that we then used in our analysis to begin linking the files, and then we had resources in place to go after the key lead,” explains RCMP Chief Supt. Dave Critchley. He wouldn’t say what that piece of evidence was.
“We believe Mr. Sharma may have been involved in other offenses, so now we’re reviewing all of the files. We believe that we’ve located potential victims from 1994,” explains Critchley.
Up to 50 RCMP investigators worked on the case, but are also giving credit to Vancouver Police who did a fan-out in the DTES with sex trade workers, giving them cell phones and warning them about Sharma.
Police have released photos and information about four vehicles belonging to Sharma. “Police are appealing to anyone who may have witnessed, or been the subject of an assault, sexual assault or theft associated to any of these four vehicles,” stresses Critchley.
Critchley says police have learned lessons from the past, since Sharma is accused of preying on women in the Downtown Eastside at the same time as serial murderer Robert Pickton.
“It’s critical we share information immediately,” he said. “On the first offence in December we immediately shared information between the RCMP and the Vancouver Police Department.”
Police have been slammed for not sharing information about Pickton earlier, before he was arrested in 2002, but Critchley says both forces acted quickly in Sharma’s case.
“At a senior management level, we were briefed and we put resources in place to solve this file as quickly as we could.”
Critchley says Sharma doesn’t appear to be connected to Pickton or any missing women.
This arrest comes as the Missing Women Inquiry continues in downtown Vancouver looking into how Robert Pickton got away with killing women for so long.
