Project Blue Light

Suspect arrested

York Regional Police and Peel Regional Police have charged a 32-year-old man, Jaehyun "David" Cho, in connection with two violent sexual assaults, one in Richmond Hill in 2014 and the other in Mississauga in 2013.

Now, police are seeking to identify any additional victims.

More info in this March 16, 2022 joint announcement by York Regional Police and Peel Regional Police.

November 13, 2014

After connecting two separate sexual assault cases, York and Peel Regional Police struck a task force called Project Blue Light. Despite investigating both incidents extensively in the years that followed, police have yet to identify a suspect.

At around 12:30 a.m. on November 13, 2014, a young woman left a York Region Transit bus on Yonge Street in Richmond Hill and began walking westbound on Canyon Hill Avenue. As she passed a dark, grassy field on the south side of the street, she was attacked from behind and pulled over a wire fence into the tall grass. There, her masked attacker brandished a weapon and sexually assaulted her, before fleeing the area and leaving her behind. 

Police combed the area immediately following the assault and would go on to canvass the neighbourhood for any information about the offender or witnesses to the incident. Soon after, investigators working in the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViCLAS) were able to connect the attacker to an incident in Mississauga that had occurred more than a year earlier.

September 26, 2013

After leaving work and taking public transit to her stop in the area of Crestview Avenue and Hurontario Road in Mississauga, a woman walked home on South Service Road. There, she was blitz attacked by a masked assailant, who pulled her into a treed area behind a townhouse complex and sexually assaulted her. 

The suspect is a muscular male, 5-foot-10 to 6-feet tall, with a light-to-medium skin tone.

"Because of the escalation of severity between the Peel incident and the York incident, I believe these are not the only two incidents," said Peel Regional Police investigator Detective Sergeant Mustafa Durgan. "I believe there may be others not reported to police. 

While the trauma inflicted on victims following a sexual assault may make it difficult for them to report an incident to police, officers working on Project Blue Light want victims to know it's never too late. 

"There is no statute of limitations on sexual offences," said Detective Sergeant Simon James, the officer originally in charge of the Richmond Hill case and head of the Special Victims Unit. 

"Someone out there knows something about this suspect," he said. "Regardless of how much time has passed, if you know something about the offender or may have encountered him, police want to hear from you."

From the cold case files

Video