‘CHILDREN ARE WATCHING’
On Caldwell Avenue, where a man was gunned down Wednesday while children played nearby, mothers plead for more security and an end to gun violence.
The death of a 20-year-old man gunned down in broad daylight has sparked both a protest against violence in community housing and an ongoing homicide probe.
Hamzeh Serhan, 20, was shot multiple times Wednesday afternoon out front of Unit 30 at 1500 Caldwell Ave., an Ottawa Community Housing property.
Police responded to multiple 911 calls reporting shots fired in the area around 3:20 p.m.
Witnesses described the scene of the shooting as a quick encounter among many people that sent multiple young men fleeing and mothers running to find their nearby children. After the shooting, several people who witnessed the last moments of Serhan’s life, including his friends, scattered.
Homicide detectives have received limited co-operation and were working Thursday to identify the people who saw Serhan gunned down and any suspects in his killing.
Serhan was known to anti-gang police who arrested him in a drug sweep last year, but homicide detectives have yet to establish a motive for the killing.
Serhan had no vital signs when police and paramedics arrived. Despite attempts to revive him, he was pronounced dead at the Civic.
Friends who had come to Serhan’s neighbourhood Thursday morning remembered him as a “charming” young man who had a way with words and excelled at both sports and school.
“He was the smartest kid I ever met in my life,” said one friend who grew up with Serhan but who would not give his name.
Serhan transferred from St. Patrick’s High School to Nepean High School in Grade 11. At Nepean, he played rugby and basketball. Serhan later began studying at the University of Ottawa. He had a keen interest in science and was studying biochemistry, with hopes of one day becoming a surgeon, friend Christian Thomas told the Citizen.
Serhan had confided in friends that he was selling drugs to make money. He was “incredibly smart,” but grew up in community housing and the opportunities that others had didn’t come his way easily, Thomas said.
There was no answer Thursday at Hamzeh Serhan’s family home on Van Lang Private. That home was also the site of an Ottawa police guns and gangs raid, one of two last October.
All told, police seized 37.5 grams of cocaine, 6.5 grams of crack, 60 pills of a prescription painkiller and a small quantity of marijuana, along with nearly $12,000 in Canadian bills and $10,000 in U.S. currency. They also seized a 2006 Infiniti M35 sedan and 2008 Yukon GMC SUV.
Hamzeh Serhan, then 19, his brother Mouhamed Serhan, then 22, and three others were all charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking and possession of the proceeds of crime.
Those charges against Hamzeh Serhan were withdrawn in May.
A former football coach who coached Serhan in the 2007-08 season for the South Ottawa Mustangs Football Association said, “He was a great kid with a fantastic sense of humour.”
Serhan played defence, often alternating between d-line and linebacker, Roy Marsaw said.
“He was a jokester and teased the other kids in the van. He often told them that if he was in on the play, he would have done it better,” Marsaw said. “That would get the other kids in the van in an uproar. We often had to ask them to settle down (and explain) he’s only joking.”
He loved to play, and others loved being around him, Marsaw said.
“I don’t know what happened that would put him in the line of fire,” Marsaw said. “But when I knew him he was a great kid.”
Sabrina Giroux, whose young children and grandchildren play in the area of the killing, was one of several mothers at the Caldwell Avenue community housing development who are calling for an end to neighbourhood violence.
Giroux said “there was a new face” among the group of young men gathered out front of Unit 30 before the shooting on Wednesday.
“I saw them hanging out being typical young men, and then I go in the house and you hear repeated shots and I come running out and everyone was in panic mode … .”
The group of mothers gathered Thursday, steps from the crime scene, calling for increased security and cameras. They organized a small demonstration to declare they won’t stand for the violence endangering their children.
Hamzeh Serhan’s death was the city’s 12th killing of the year.