EDMONTON -- Nearly three months after her homicide, police are releasing video of a man leaving the Edmonton motel room where Lisa Arsenault’s body was found.
A photo from the video was made public two months ago.
On Wednesday, Edmonton Police Service also shared a composite sketch and the surveillance footage the photo was taken from, which shows a white man wearing a fishing-style vest walk out of a room at the Royal Lodge on Gateway Boulevard on May 24.
As he closes the door, he looks at a staff member behind him, then walks away from the building.
“It’s going to be an average, ordinary citizen who helps police make a break in this case,” Ashley Kowalewski told CTV News Edmonton, noting at the time of her sister’s death, only essential businesses were open because of the pandemic.
“I hope that this drawing does ring a bell with somebody, whether it’s a hotel worker, a corner store worker, a police officer in another area.”
Arsenault – a 48-year-old mother of three, the oldest of three daughters herself, and a woman who had intermittently struggled with addiction and worked in the sex industry – was found dead on May 24.
The man in the video was previously named a person of interest. A vehicle, which police identified Wednesday as a silver Dodge Magnum, was last seen heading north on Gateway Boulevard that day.
Homicide detective Richard Windover would not say why investigators reclassified the man as a suspect.
“We released the video because it gives just a little bit better view of the person that we’re looking for than just doing a photo.”
Kowalewski said she doesn’t know the man in the surveillance footage, either.
Although she described the family as close, Arsenault’s struggles sometimes meant parts of her life were kept separate from her sister.
Kowalewski only knows Arsenault had been staying at the motel for about a month before her death. Arsenault had been sending online orders – including crocheting materials for a niece – to Kowalewski’s house instead.
“My sister had a good heart and she really cared about people,” Kowalewski told CTV News Edmonton. “She was a lively one. A real firecracker.”
That Kowalewski couldn’t help her sister more still haunts her.
“I don’t know what more we could have done to help her. That’s something I struggle with all the time,” she said, telling others with loved ones managing substance abuse, “Keep having compassion for these people who are in desperate places.”
Anyone with information is asked to call EPS at 780-423-4567 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
Windover commented, “The public, the family, the friends of Lisa Arsenault all have questions surrounding her death and we need to be able to answer them.”
Kowalewski made her own plea for help: “It’s not just about our own family. It’s about the community’s safety.
“There’s a murderer at large. A man walked into a business, killed somebody in broad daylight with a visible witness behind him on video, and he’s still at large.”
