A coroner’s inquest heard Monday {that a} man killed two individuals at random in Montreal in August 2022, then travelled to Ontario to go to the Toronto Zoo and Canada’s Wonderland earlier than returning to Quebec to homicide once more.
Police recognized Abdulla Shaikh, 26, from video on the Ontario amusement park and zoo, and receipts from the venues have been present in his automobile, provincial police investigator Alexandra Caron Vadeboncoeur advised the inquest. She offered no clarification for why he took the journey.
Shaikh killed three individuals within the Montreal space in a 24-hour interval earlier than police tracked him down and fatally shot him, the inquest heard Monday. Coroner Géhane Kamel is presiding over the inquiry into the murders of André Lemieux, Mohamed Belhaj and Alex Lévis-Crevier in addition to the police killing of the 26-year-old suspect.
Caron Vadeboncoeur was one in every of 4 regulation enforcement brokers who took the stand on the inquest’s first day after Kamel opened by saying the hearings intention to make clear the deaths and produce suggestions to forestall comparable murders.
The investigator testified that there have been no hyperlinks between Shaikh’s victims. She stated that in response to witnesses and video footage, a white Dodge Challenger was within the neighborhood of all three killings.
Police have stated that inside about one hour in Montreal on Aug. 2, 2022, Shaikh fatally shot Lemieux, 64, who was inside a bus shelter and Belhaj, 48, who was strolling to work. About 24 hours later – after driving to Ontario and again – he killed 22-year-old Lévis-Crevier, who was skateboarding on the road within the Montreal suburb of Laval.
Shaikh, who had a historical past of mental-health issues, had no felony file regardless of some brushes with the regulation. Caron Vadeboncoeur stated he was identified with schizophrenia round 2017 or 2018, and his household stated he was not taking his remedy as prescribed: one injection each three months. She didn’t say what the remedy was.
Earlier than the killings, Shaikh had been residing alone in a Montreal residence and didn’t have any mates, Caron Vadeboncoeur stated. He was near his mom, who had been messaging him on the WhatsApp software across the time of the murders. His mom advised investigators he had been appearing usually.
“No one within the household noticed this coming,” Caron Vadeboncoeur stated.
Quebec’s mental-health evaluate board had dominated in March 2022 that Shaikh, who was below the supervision of a mental-health hospital, posed a “important danger” to public security however might proceed residing locally, having proven enchancment over the earlier six months.
On the morning of Aug. 4, 2022, police tracked him to a motel room in Montreal’s St-Laurent borough, the place officers killed him after an change of gunfire.
Caron Vadeboncoeur stated police recovered two weapons linked to Shaikh. One, discovered on Shaikh, was a 9-mm pistol with no serial quantity, which had a clip with a 31-bullet capability. The opposite, a Glock 19, was present in a Dodge Challenger, which Shaikh had rented by way of a car-sharing app and was parked close to the motel.
In separate testimony, retired Montreal police main crimes detective Donald Simpson advised the inquiry police initially had the flawed car below surveillance. The choice to test the app for a doable car match got here right down to a hunch from a colleague, Simpson stated.
The automobile’s proprietor recognized Shaikh and stated he’d rented the car to him between July 29 and Aug. 5, 2022. The car was noticed in a Tim Hortons car parking zone close to the motel with burn marks within the again seat, Simpson stated.
Police stored Shaikh’s room below watch till transferring in at 7 a.m., utilizing a “dynamic entry” to breach the door. Claude Thibault, a Montreal police sergeant, stated the suspect fired twice and a colleague fired 3 times.
Earlier, Caron Vadeboncoeur stated Shaikh had no allow for a weapon however the weapons themselves weren’t prohibited. “They have been presumably discovered on the black market, or might have been assembled,” she stated.
Earlier this month, the province’s prosecutor’s workplace stated no prices can be laid in reference to Shaikh’s demise.
This report by The Canadian Press was first revealed Sept. 25, 2023.
This can be a corrected story. A earlier model misspelled the surname of Alexandra Caron Vadeboncoeur
