Six Sri Lankan nationals died after a stabbing incident in the Canadian capital of Ottawa on Thursday (7 March)。
The victims included a mother and her four children, the youngest of whom was a two-month-old girl.
Source: Reuters
A 19-year-old student, who knew and lived with the family, has been arrested and charged with murder.
According to ABC News, the Ottawa stabbing victims were identified as a woman and her four children. They were:
A 40-year-old man named Amarakoonmubiayansela Ge Gamini Amarakoon, who was reportedly an acquaintance of the family, was also killed.
Source: Facebook
The father of the family sustained serious but non-life-threatening injuries and is receiving medical attention in the hospital.
Canadian police reportedly found him screaming outside the house when they arrived at the scene.
Officers subsequently found the victims’ bodies inside.
Febrio De-Zoysa, a 19-year-old student who recently moved from Sri Lanka to Canada, has been arrested in relation to the case.
According to Al Jazeera, the student was identified as an acquaintance who stayed with the family.
The reason behind the crime was not immediately evident.
He was charged with six counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder.
Source: Reuters
A monk from a monastery that the family attended visited the injured father after the incident.
Recounting their conversation, the monk told National Post that the father did not sense anything “wrong” in the lead-up to the attack.
The family had even celebrated the alleged murderer’s 19th birthday just a few days before.
Speaking at a news conference, Ottawa police chief Eric Stubbs described the tragedy as a “senseless act of violence perpetrated on purely innocent victims”.
He revealed that based on preliminary investigations, the deaths were caused by an “edged weapon”.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was shocked and horrified by the mass killing, calling it a “terrible tragedy”.
Canada last saw a mass murder case in December 2022 when a man opened fire at a condominium in Toronto, resulting in five casualties.
In September that year, a man killed 11 people in a string of stabbing incidents in the province of Saskatchewan.
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Featured image adapted from Facebook and Reuters.
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