Investigators told us Monday the store owner was grabbed by the arm and put into a dark mini-van by unidentifiable, hooded suspects. "It looks like they went for Mr. Patel specifically," explained Major Crimes Capt. Emmett Williams. The van went south toward Chesterfield. The next piece of evidence police have is at Anncarrow's Landing, where Patel's body was found four days later.
"That timeline is still very hard to put together," Williams told us. He says detectives are working to figure out what happened during those four days. They don't know at this point when in that time Patel was killed or even where, meaning there's no murder scene from which to collect evidence...
"We've been able in the last year to move forward one small step at a time," Williams said. One of those small steps has been looking into why Patel may have been targeted. "Right at that time period there was a taskforce that was investigating cigarette trafficking up and down the interstate corridor there, Richmond, Chesterfield and Henrico and that very much is one of the issues that we looked at," Capt. Williams detailed.
