White car spotted in surveillance footage of homeowner staying near University of Idaho student victims
Surveillance footage from a property near to where the murders of four University of Idaho students took place was obtained by police and showed a white car travelling around the time of the incident, according to the owner.
Kane Francetich, who lives just 0.3 miles from the murder scene in Moscow, Idaho, said detectives had reached out to him on 14 November, a day after the four students were brutally murdered in their beds.
Since the last week, police have asked for the public’s help in tracking down the occupant or occupants of a white Hyundai Elantra in connection to the case.
The surveillance footage placed on top of his six-unit rental building on Linda Lane showed a white car speeding past. Only a side view of the car, however, was captured in the footage.
It remains unclear if the car was the same one the police have linked to the murders.
The killings of Xana Kernodle, 20, her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20, Madison Mogen, 21 and Kaylee Goncalves, 21 in the early morning hours of 13 November sent shockwaves across the small town of Moscow, where no murder had been recorded since 2015.
More than a month after the unsolved crime, no arrests have been made or a murder weapon recovered by police, leading to anger and anguish among the victims’ families.
“I downloaded it and gave them access to everything from 2 am through noon on that Sunday the 13th,” Mr Francetich told Fox News.
He said the detectives told him they would run “their special analysis tools” on the footage to find the clues and described the car, which zoomed west on Taylor Road between 2.14am and 3.15am on 13 November, as both “white” and “light coloured”.
Mr Francetich’s rental building and its camera sit on a hill facing Taylor Road, the main street that connects 1122 King Road to Highway 95, the route the killer may have taken upon fleeing.
The property owner said he also noticed a sedan travelling west towards 1122 King Road around 1.45am and return to the highway a few minutes later, suspecting the involvement of a “third-party driver” who dropped two victims before the murders.
Moscow police said in a press release on Thursday that investigators are sorting through 22,000 registered Hyundai Elantras from 2011-13 that fit into the search criteria of a car seen near 1122 King Road the night of the killings.
Police have recovered other footage from a gas station which showed a white sedan driving along Highway 8 at 3.45am on 13 November. The employee of the gas station, who wanted to remain anonymous for safety reasons, said the sedan drove past “real quick” before turning off the highway down a side street.
