Adam Smolcic believes a police officer erased a video recording of a fatal police shooting from his cellphone. (CBC)

A U.S. data recovery company has been asked to check a cellphone to see if it still contains a video recording of a fatal police shooting in downtown Vancouver last week.

The owner of the phone, Adam Smolcic, claims he captured the images last Friday morning, but believes the video was erased by a Vancouver police officer who briefly seized the phone.

B.C. Civil Liberties Association spokesman David Eby said a local forensics firm could not recover any video from the phone's memory, so it has been sent to a more specialized company in the U.S.

The shooting victim, Michael Vann Hubbard, 58, was not the suspect police were seeking in connection with a vehicle break-in, according to Abbotsford police, who were asked to conduct an independent investigation into the shooting by Vancouver police Chief Jim Chu.

Police were seeking the perpetrator of a vehicle break-in when they stopped Hubbard to search his backpack. According to witnesses, Hubbard slowly pulled out an X-Acto knife and advanced toward two officers, one of whom shot him dead, Vancouver police said.

Abbotsford police confirmed on Tuesday that the backpack Hubbard was carrying was not the one stolen from the vehicle.

They said also said Tuesday that they are currently looking at surveillance footage from two nearby security cameras that they believe may shed more light on the events that led up to the shooting.

Investigators said they will release the footage once it's determined it won't jeopardize future proceedings.

With files from the Canadian Press