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UPDATE (March 30) — Police released a sketch of a second suspect they’re looking for in the kidnapping of Chez Cora president Nicholas Tsouflidis — that composite sketch (above) shows a 28 to 30 year-old man, with brown eyes and a thick beard. Quebec’s provincial police estimate his height as just over six feet, and weight around 240 to 250 pounds. The SQ is also looking for one other suspect, pictured below.
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Quebec’s provincial police, the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) have released details of a man they suspect in the kidnapping of the president of Quebec-based breakfast chain Chez Cora.
44-year-old Nicholas Tsouflidis was kidnapped from his Mirabel home at night almost two weeks ago, before being left tied up in a ditch in Laval several hours later.
Police suspect the crime was done for financial reasons, i.e., to extract a ransom out of Tsouflidis’ family (Tsouflidis is the son of the chain’s namesake and founder, Cora Tsouflidou), although no ransom was actually paid. Tsouflidis reportedly did not know his kidnappers.
The SQ put out a computer-generated image of a suspect, who they say is aged between 25 and 30, and has brown hair and brown eyes, and they also said the car involved in the kidnapping was a blue sedan.
In the time between the kidnapping and now, more information seeped out about the events on March 8 and 9, suggesting that authorities struggled to respond effectively to Tsouflidis’ kidnapping: TVA reported that during the kidnapping, Tsouflidis spent 30 minutes on the phone to 911 while locked in a car trunk, speaking to two separate police services and trying to give his location off a map app on his smartphone.
It appears Tsouflidis’ call was transferred around because he was not actually speaking to authorities responsible for the area where he was. Police never rescued Tsouflidis: two Laval residents on an early morning walk found Tsouflidis tied up and clambering out of a ditch, instead.