DULUTH, Ga. — Hundreds of cameras in a Gwinnett County neighborhood are being credited with helping find a driver who police say hit and killed a man a week before his birthday.
Police said the driver thought he did nothing wrong.
A Duluth police officer spent all day using more than 300 city cameras to help find a man now charged in a deadly hit-and-run crash.
Police found and confronted the suspect next to his damaged car with a blanket over it the same day of the crash.
“I can place you up behind the wheel driving the vehicle when the crash happened,” the officer said.
It was just after midnight on Peachtree Industrial Boulevard where police say 26-year-old Cassius Franswah died walking along the road.
He was less than a mile from home when someone hit and killed the rising entrepreneur a week before his birthday.
The driver left the scene but left a clue for the police.
“They launched that investigation by closing the road down and gathering vehicle parts left at the scene,” said Public Information Officer Ted Sadowski.
An investigator linked that car part to a Nissan Sentra.
They ran the make and model with the help of more than 350 city cameras. Police say a similar car drove into apartments three miles away shortly after the crash.
The suspect told police he thought he hit a deer.
“It was a person and you hit them and then you kept driving,” the officer said.
Police arrested and charged 45-year-old Nidar Ballan-Bellan within 17 hours of the crash.
We got a look at the Duluth Police Real Time Crime Center where even more monitors are being added by the end of the year.
The hope is to have even more ways to find the people they’re after.
“Without our cameras, this person may still be out there,” Sadowski said.
Police said Ballan-Bellan does not have a valid license on top of his homicide and hit and run charges.
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