Shooting victim was ‘a very nice gentleman’: housemate
A neighbour of a 76-year-old man fatally shot through the door of an Alberta Avenue rooming house says no one had anything against the victim.
“Nobody had no reason to shoot him,” Paula Piche, who lived in the same house as Nexhmi (Nick) Nuhi, said Friday. “He was a very nice gentleman. He never did anybody no harm.”
Nuhi was killed after someone fired a round Wednesday through the outside basement door of the house at 11119 94 St. The case has not been ruled a homicide.
Piche said she ran downstairs after hearing a gunshot. The person who fired the weapon “took off,” she said. She thinks the shooting was random.
“Some guy came knocking on the door and Nick said ‘Come back in like 20 minutes I’m busy now,’ ” she said. “The guy outside the door said, ‘I have nowhere to go.’ And he said, ‘I’m busy right now can you come back later?’ And the guy said, ‘No’ and he shot him.”
Nuhi lived in the basement with two women who “were just like his daughters,” said Piche, who has lived on the main floor of the house for several years.
Nuhi mostly kept to himself and didn’t like to leave the house, Piche said. She said he was originally from Albania and she believed he came to Canada as an adult. As far as she knew, he was collecting an old-age pension.
According to a 1991 Journal article, a man named Nexhmi Nuhi, 50, was one of 30 people across Canada arrested in what was then the largest cocaine conspiracy case in Alberta history. The article said Nuhi was charged with conspiracy to traffic in narcotics, but a search of court records this week turned up no recent offences.
Nuhi was friendly and well-liked, and could often be seen walking his dog Princess around the neighbourhood, Piche said.
An autopsy was scheduled for Friday, city police said. Investigators appealed for information about the case in a news release Thursday.
If confirmed as a homicide, the case would be Edmonton’s 38th of 2017. Police are not counting two officer-involved shootings and a fatal hit-and-run where charges were dropped in their tally.