Family, friends mourn ‘ninja’ carpenter slain in Market
When she was growing up in Timmins, Heather Simon lived in the shadow of her big brother, Austin.
“I looked up to him. He was very popular. Anyone who met him liked him,” she said. “He was charismatic. He was handsome. He was cool. And because he was my big brother, I was cool too.
“No one would bother me. I was Austin Simon’s little sister.”
Austin Simon, a 39-year-old carpentry “ninja” and a father of two young children, died Halloween night after he was found unconscious on Murray Street suffering from stab wounds.
On Sunday, 33-year-old Ignace Kayiranga, appeared by video link in an Ottawa court to be charged with second-degree murder. He was ordered held in custody.
A publication ban covers evidence presented during Kayiranga’s brief hearing.
He was one of two people charged over the weekend in separate, unrelated stabbings in Ottawa.
On Friday evening, Nichole Hover, 44, appeared with her lawyer, Robert McGowan, at the Elgin Street police headquarters to surrender in connection with the killing of Brian Blondin, 62.
Blondin was found dead Friday afternoon after police were called to a house on Sidney Street in Little Italy.
Hover was charged with second-degree murder and will remain in custody while she awaits her next court appearance.
Austin Simon was found at about 10:30 p.m. Thursday by staff from Ottawa Inner City Health, who run a safe-injection site on the property of the nearby Shepherd’s of Good Hope.
He didn’t live downtown and Heather Simon doesn’t know why he was in the area that night. She said she is angry about the assumptions some people have made.
“I have no idea why he was there,” she said. “Wrong place, wrong time. Austin worked every day so for him to be out late at night ... I just don’t know why.
“He was a wonderful man, a family man. He was a loving father of two. He was a hard worker.”
Shayne Bedard met Austin Simon when Austin hired him to work for his stucco company in Timmins. Austin picked him up on the side the road on his first day of the job and took him to buy proper construction boots.
The next day Austin told Bedard and the other employees they weren’t going to a job site; he was bringing them over to his house for the day.
“He says, ‘Come in. Make yourself comfortable. We’re watching movies today,’” Bedard recalled. “I’m like, ‘ What the hell? I’ve never had a job like this.’”
The movie was a documentary on ninjas and how they became experts in whatever sword or knife they wielded, always catching their enemies off-guard with a new form of weapon.
“The idea was that we had to be that way with work,” Bedard said. “With stucco, we were using hops and trowels and putty knives. He trained us to be like ninjas. We’d run through the scaffolding. I learned to work like a ninja.”
Bedard and Austin became close friends.
It was Bedard who convinced Austin to come to Ottawa for work in 2012.
“He was getting tired of being in Timmins. I called him up and said, ‘Pack your stuff. Jump on a bus and come to Ottawa. Trust me, life will be better,’” Bedard said.
“He was the best. He taught me everything I know. He had passion for it. He had pride in everything he did.”
Austin Simon is survived by his daughter, Avery, 6, and son, Anthony, 4, his parents, Arlene Salo and Leonard Simon, and his younger siblings, Heather Simon, Shay Simon, Laina Roy, Tiira Roy and Tania Losier.
I have no idea why he was there. Wrong place, wrong time. … He was a wonderful man, a family man. He was a loving father of two. He was a hard worker.