Man charged in 2010 death of prostitute
A 22-year-old man has been charged with first-degree murder in the 2010 death of Jennifer Stewart.
Ottawa police sent out a media release just before 11:30 p.m. Tuesday announcing the charges against Adrian Daou.
Stewart, 36, was found lying face-up in the dirt in a Vanier parking lot in August 2010. She had been stabbed in the head, legs and wrists.
At the time, her aunt told the Citizen that Stewart had turned to prostitution to feed her crack addiction, but denied her addiction to her family. “We offered help and she pushed us away,” Nicole Chenier said in 2010. “She didn’t want help. She looked me in the eye and lied about her addiction.”
Stewart had been convicted of prostitution-related offences four times.
The charge against Daou comes three weeks after another man was charged with first-degree murder in two of Ottawa’s unsolved prostitute killings.
On Feb. 6, Marc Leduc, 56, was charged in the 2011 killing of Leeanne Lawson, 23, and the 2008 killing of Pamela Kosmack, 39. Kosmack’s relatives have denied she was a sex worker.
The city’s sex workers have been on edge for the last 14 months, since then Ottawa police chief Vern White called a press conference to talk about a “pattern” that investigators had identified in the killings of city sex workers.
The charges against Leduc, who was linked to the deaths through DNA, were the first major break in those cases.
Now, less than a month later, the charge against Daou could account for another of the unsolved cases.
Daou is expected to appear in court Wednesday.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Ottawa Police Major Crime Section at 613-236-1222 ext. 5493 or Crime Stoppers at 613233-8477.