Victim’s life fraught with tragedy
Alisalehie was allegedly stabbed after argument outside shelter last week
Gholam Alisalehie survived being shot twice, an opioid addiction and seeing his fellow soldiers die in the Iran-Iraq War.
And after he was attacked with a drywall saw in broad daylight Thursday afternoon, he clung to life for two more days before succumbing to his injuries Saturday morning — the city’s third homicide of 2020.
Ottawa police and paramedics responded to the area outside the Shepherds of Good Hope shelter on Murray Street around 2:10 p.m. Thursday after reports that a man had been stabbed. Staff from the shelter and Ottawa Inner City Health, which operates a safe injection site in the area, attended to Alisalehie, 58, until emergency crews arrived.
Police believe an argument broke out between Alisalehie and two other men. Police allege 23-year-old Tyler Richard then pulled a blade from his pocket and stabbed Alisalehie, who was taken to hospital in life-threatening condition but later stabilized.
Hours later, Ottawa police central detectives, who at that point were investigating an attempt on his life, released surveillance images of two men wanted in the attack — one in a red baseball cap who police would later allege was Richard and another in a grey coat and sunglasses.
Richard appeared in court Sunday and was charged with second-degree murder by homicide detectives who took the case after
Alisalehie died. The other man, also arrested after the stabbing, was released without charges.
More than a decade ago, Alisalehie was sentenced to two years in a secure drug and psychiatric treatment facility after robbing two Ottawa drugstores in 2007 — in search of narcotics to feed an addiction. His sentencing for those crimes reveals a man who battled his thoughts and painful memories.
His lawyer, in 2009, told court that he was searching out opiates to try to lessen the pain he was in everyday.
Then 46, Alisalehie was suffering from the aftermath of having fought as a teenage soldier in the Iran-Iraq War.
“He sees real-life flashbacks as if his friends or family are in front of him being killed and he is unable to help them,” his lawyer said.
Alisalehie came to Canada as a refugee from Turkey. He ended up there after getting lost in the desert. He witnessed the bombing of his friends, threw down his weapon and fled into the desert. Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, Alisalehie worked as a mechanic and a plumber in the years before the robberies. By then, he had been shooting up opiates for nearly five years.
Alisalehie had nightmares and hallucinations of babies crying. A psychiatrist said he heard bombs exploding and had visions of the dead walking around him.
But he was “ready for the future,” after being sentenced to treatment, he told a judge, who thanked his lawyer and the prosecutor for treating Alisalehie as a “valuable human being.”
This newspaper could not access records to determine whether alleged killer Richard has a criminal record in Ontario.
Alisalehie’s is the second homicide to occur outside of the shelter in just five months. Austin Simon, 39, was also stabbed, after a dispute, outside the shelter on Oct. 31.