MONTREAL — A 26-year-old man, Abdulla Shaikh, who suffered from mental health problems and who allegedly killed three people at random on Tuesday and Wednesday, in Montreal and Laval, was shot dead Thursday morning by one or more police officers while he was was inside a room at the Motel Pierre, in the borough of Saint-Laurent.
The Canadian Press obtained the identity of the suspect from a police source and the Sûreté du Québec was to meet his family in the afternoon.
Shot dead in his hotel room
On rue Grenet, behind the Motel Pierre, several residents of an apartment building were woken up by noises coming from the backyard of the building.
One of the residents told The Canadian Press that he went out on his balcony shortly before 7 a.m. after hearing “a big bang”.
“I don’t know what it was, I came out and we saw two armed policemen in the courtyard who said to go back inside.”
The man who refuses to identify himself, because the Motel Pierre, next to the building, “is a place where there is always trouble”, then heard several shots.
“I did not see the police shoot because we went inside, but we also heard the noises of the window bursting”, said the witness, pointing to the window of a hotel room which was covered with a sheet of aluminum foil by the police.
Several residents of the building told the same story and a police source told The Canadian Press that the suspect was shot while in a bedroom and that officers who opened fire were in the yard of the building on rue Grenet where the police have erected a security perimeter.
Victims who would have been chosen at random
Thursday morning, the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) confirmed that the 26-year-old suspect had been shot, before adding that it is now the Bureau of Independent Investigations (BEI) which is called upon to make the light on the intervention that took place at the Motel Pierre.
As for the three murders, the investigation is led by the Sûreté du Québec (SQ).
An SQ sergeant, Audrey-Anne Bilodeau, believes “that at first glance”, the man would have chosen his victims at random and “he is someone for whom the Montreal Police Service had intervened in connection with mental health calls.
“A big part of the investigation is trying to establish the motivations of the person. What we know at first sight is that this person would not be linked to organized crime” and “it seems that he would have acted alone, at first sight, he had no accomplice, no necessarily no link with the victims either, unfortunately. So we are still trying to finally establish the motivations of this man there, ”explained Audrey-Anne Bilodeau in a press briefing in front of the Motel Pierre where the SQ has established a command post.
As the SQ spokesperson pointed out, determining the motives of a suspect who has been shot can be difficult.
“It represents a higher level of difficulty, but however the investigators will have other avenues of investigation, we will go to see the relatives of the person and we will also try to have information on the scene. The scene will speak to us as such. Sometimes, we will have to, by legal authorizations, for example warrants to enter homes, go and see if there were firearms present, if they were registered. So this is the kind of step that the investigators will go through in a case like this, ”said Sergeant Bilodeau.
Three murders in 36 hours
In a first communication, the BEI explains that police officers from the SPVM’s tactical intervention group conducted a search around 7:00 a.m. inside the motel located on Marcel-Laurin Boulevard.
On the spot, the police were confronted by a man in possession of a firearm and shots were fired.
The BEI reports that the man would have been hit by at least one projectile and that his death was confirmed on the spot.
During the previous 36 hours, three people were shot dead on the public highway: two in Montreal and another in Laval.
Tuesday evening, around 9:45 p.m., a 64-year-old man was murdered near a bus shelter located at the intersection of Jules-Poitras and Deguire boulevards, in the borough of Saint-Laurent.
About 65 minutes later, in the neighboring neighborhood of Ahuntsic, a 48-year-old man was killed at the intersection of Sauvé Ouest and Meilleur streets, near Saint-Benoît Park.
Both deaths were confirmed by police as soon as they arrived at the scene.
And Wednesday evening in Laval, a man whose age has not been revealed who was on boulevard Clermont, in the Laval-des-Rapides district, was shot dead with at least one projectile from a firearm.
During a press briefing Thursday morning, Sophie Roy, acting director of the SPVM, offered her condolences to the families of the victims.
“We are all sensitive at the SPVM to the pain of the families. Moreover, I would like to offer my most heartfelt condolences to the families who are today affected by these tragedies. Since Tuesday, all the investigative units of the gendarmerie and SPVM intelligence have been working day and night on a major investigation to elucidate these murders” indicated the director of the police force before adding: “I I am proud of the dedication, the commitment, of all of our teams who mobilized, thus allowing a rapid outcome of the investigation”.
The Minister of Public Security, Geneviève Guilbault, thanked the “SPVM which reacted quickly”, in a publication on the Twitter network.
“The three homicides that occurred in Montreal and Laval horrified us all. Our hearts go out to the families of the three victims,” the minister said.
A worried resident
A resident of the Saint-Laurent borough met Thursday morning did not hide his concern following the incident.
“I am a bit worried. I take the bus, I work (at night) and yesterday when I heard the news, I said to myself that no, there is no way that I will take the bus here in the area”, said Daryl Holmes, who finally decided to call an Uber to get home.
Mr. Holmes was not surprised to learn that the suspect was found in the area of the motel, saying that the people of Saint-Laurent know that this is a place where suspicious individuals are often found.
If he is reassured that the suspect has been found and neutralized, Mr. Holmes is shaken to such an extent that he is thinking of leaving the district in which he has lived all his life.
“It’s not a safe place anymore,” he said in English, adding that when he was young, children could leave their bikes lying outside without even fearing that it would be stolen.
“Now you can’t even open the door because you never know what’s going to happen,” he lamented.
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