HOMICIDE INVESTIGATION

25-year-old man stabbed to death

A man was stabbed to death early Thursday in Nepean, Ottawa police said.

The police said they were called to the scene around 1:30 a.m. and found the victim, later identified as 25-year-old Christopher Avery Houghton, dead.

Homicide detectives descended on the area and neighbours gathered in the street in the morning near the police tape, which cordoned off a bungalow at the corner of Sherry Lane and Gary Avenue.

Wayne Miller, who lives close to the home, stood in his driveway as police officers took photos of evidence markers on the street.

“This is very unexpected. Not to think that we didn't think something could happen here, but this is a great neighbourhood. We're like family around here,” Miller said, adding that the families who lived in the corner home ostensibly rented the place.

“They kind of kept to themselves,” he said.

A young couple with two children occupied the main floor of the home, according to neighbours, and at least one man lived in the basement.

“The guys in the basement, you don't know which ones lived there and which ones were just coming and going,” said Daniel Goulet, another neighbour.

“There was always vehicles coming in and out of that place,” Buck Chapman added.

A number of cars and trucks were frequently parked outside the home, Chapman and other neighbours said. Garbage piled up in the driveway and the lawn was often overgrown, they said, which further distinguished it from the manicured gardens and emerald grass of surrounding houses.

But, Miller said, the children who lived upstairs seemed happy and often played on the lawn and biked down the street.

Some neighbours woke up Thursday to the sound of police officers knocking on their doors, but at least two people recounted hearing a car or a truck speed by in the middle of the night, loud enough to wake them, which they said was unusual.

“It's a really quiet neighbourhood. You don't want this to happen anywhere, but it's freaky,” Mirna Chapman said.

“I did hear a vehicle go whipping down Gary Avenue as if it was on the Queensway. It woke me up. That's how fast he was going. That's all I heard. That was not normal.”

Ottawa police said the slaying occurred around 1:30 a.m., but did not release more details Thursday.

Anyone with information was asked to call the Ottawa Police Service homicide unit at 613-2361222 ext. 5493.

JULIE OLIVER Mirna Chapman lives in a Nepean neighbourhood where homicide detectives are investigating a stabbing death. She said she heard a car speed away in the night.