Youth faces first-degree murder charge

A male youth has been charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death early Saturday of a 50-year-old Vanier resident.

Police identified the victim as Keith Fitzsimmons. It was the city’s 15th homicide of 2017.

Two men were arrested at the scene and appeared in court. They have been remanded in custody.

In addition to the youth, whose identity is protected under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, Sébastien Lafleur, 21, was charged with forcible confinement, uttering threats and several firearms offences.

Police said they don’t believe there was any relationship between the youth charged and the man killed, who was walking down the street when he was shot once.

Police were called at around 3 a.m. to Fréchette Street near Jolliet Avenue to respond to the shooting.

Police performed CPR and used a defibrillator to try to stabilize Fitzsimmons. Paramedics took over from police and performed “aggressive life-saving interventions.”

Fitzsimmons remained in cardiac arrest as he was transported to The Ottawa Hospital trauma centre, and died in hospital.

Police put caution tape around a two-storey building containing four apartments at 255 Fréchette.

A tenant in the building at 255 Fréchette said the woman who lives in an apartment next to his on the top floor told him someone had been shot on Saturday morning.

“The girl told me someone was shot. She was shaking,” said Rob Martin.

The woman did not say who had been shot, and he didn’t ask, said Martin.

On Saturday morning, police were also watching two nearby apartment buildings around the corner on Jolliet. At one of the buildings, 51 Jolliet, the door to a second-floor apartment was open, and police warned a reporter to stay away because it, too, was a crime scene.

Patricia Turcotte, who lives across the street from 255 Fréchette, said her boyfriend woke up to go to work not long after 3 a.m. He saw police in the street with guns drawn, aimed toward the two houses on Jolliet, Turcotte said.

She woke up around 5 a.m. to find Fréchette full of police cars.

“What is going on? I thought I was going to be sick,” said Turcotte, who was still shaken when she was interviewed Saturday morning. “And right before the holidays, too.”

Turcotte said she saw a police officer tracking footprints from the building on Fréchette toward the two buildings on Jolliet.

“They were looking for something in the snow.”

Turcotte believes, based on conversations she had with the daughter of a tenant at 255 Fréchette, that the man who was killed lived in a building at the corner of Fréchette and Jolliet.

Turcotte has lived on the street for six years, and says it’s usually quiet.

“It’s still not going to make me move. I still feel safe, but this is very scary.”

She said Vanier is unfairly labelled as dangerous. “This could happen anywhere.” However, in the last couple years the area near the corner of Fréchette and Jolliet has become a hangout for prostitutes and drug users, Turcotte said.