OTTAWA: Six Sri Lankan people, including a mother and four young children, were stabbed to death in the Canadian capital Ottawa on Wednesday evening (March 6), police said on Thursday, shaking a country where mass killings are rare.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was shocked by what he called a “terrible tragedy.” The father of the family was also injured in the attack and is in hospital.
Police say Febrio De-Zoysa, a 19-year-old male student from Sri Lanka, has been arrested and charged with six counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. De-Zoysa knew the family and had lived in the home, they said.
The victims who died were a 35-year-old woman and her children aged seven, four, two and two months, as well as a 40-year-old man who was an acquaintance of the family.
“This was a senseless act of violence perpetrated on innocent people,” Ottawa police chief Eric Stubbs said at a televised news conference. Police said they had never had any dealings with the suspect or his family before.
Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, in a social media post, said it was “one of the most shocking incidents of violence in our city’s history.”
Ottawa, which has a population of 1 million, recorded 14 murders in 2023 and 15 in 2022.
Wednesday’s victim was found inside a home in the southwest suburb of Barrhaven. Police arrived at the scene following an emergency call shortly before 11pm on Wednesday.
Mass murders are rare in Canada. In December 2022, a man shot five people in suburban Toronto before being shot dead by police.
In September of that year, a man stabbed and killed 11 people in the western province of Saskatchewan. He died of a cocaine overdose shortly after his arrest.
