Police treat mom’s death in apartment as suspicious

Two-year-old boy was found alive with corpse by maintenance worker

Ottawa police homicide detectives are now investigating after a two-year-old was found alive inside an apartment with his mother’s dead body.

Major crime investigators took the case over on Thursday, one day after the woman’s body was found by a maintenance worker at her community housing apartment building at 18 Burnside Ave. in Mechanicsville.

Police are investigating her death as suspicious.

Police responded to a call to the Burnside apartment building at around 11 a.m. on Wednesday, after an employee doing maintenance in the Ottawa Community Housing building discovered the woman’s body.

The cause and time of death have not been determined.

The youngster was in good health when he was found, police say.

By Thursday afternoon, he was with his family. This is the second time in as many months that a youngster has been discovered with a deceased parent.

On Feb. 27, Gatineau police discovered a three-year-old boy in a Hull apartment where his father, Chris LeCouvie, and LeCouvie’s girlfriend, Amelie-Audrey Gauthier, had died of a drug overdose two days earlier.