Man dies after confrontation with Ottawa police
A 37-year-old man who was rushed to the hospital in critical condition Sunday morning after a confrontation with Ottawa police has died.
A smartphone video, more than 27 minutes long and obtained by the Ottawa Citizen after being filmed by a bystander, appears to show that at least eight minutes went by during which police made no attempts to revive the man while he lay handcuffed near the entrance of an apartment building at 55 Hilda St.
Nimao Ali and Heba Mounieziel, family friends who live in the same apartment building, identified the man as Abdirahman Abdi. The Special Investigations Unit did not identify the individual.
Abdi was taken off life support Monday afternoon at Ottawa Civic Hospital, the SIU said.
His family, however, said a doctor’s assessment concluded the man had been dead for 45 minutes before arriving at intensive care.
Ali called him a “beautiful soul . . . He was the kind of man that when you walk in the elevator, he will hold the door, always had a smile on his face and gentle with the kids and neighbours,” she said.
“We’re very sad to see him go and how his life ended. He is in our prayers.”
Ali, acting as a spokesperson and translator for the family, said Abdi was “mentally ill.”
The Ottawa Police Service and the Ottawa Paramedic Service said they could not comment with an SIU investigation underway.
According to a statement released by the SIU Sunday, a disturbance at Wellington St. W. and Fairmont Ave. triggered a call to police about 9:30 a.m. Sunday.
Officers found the man, and a “confrontation” took place several blocks away, outside 55 Hilda St., the SIU release states.
Ali and Mounieziel said Abdi lived with other family members in a unit at 55 Hilda St.
“At some point during the confrontation, the man suffered medical distress,” an SIU spokesman, Jason Gennaro, said in the release. He did not specify what the distress was, but said “there is no indication that any firearms were involved.”
A man who lives across the street said he heard screaming Sunday morning and looked out his window to see police officers tackling Abdi at the front door of the apartment building.
“They tossed him to the ground and put the handcuffs on him. The guy was still screaming for help. They kept whaling on him,” said the man, who declined to give his name.
He said one of the officers used his baton on Abdi. The witness said that officers initially made no efforts to resuscitate Abdi and it was only after the paramedics arrived that CPR was begun with chest compressions and a defibrillator.
Abdi was taken to hospital in an ambulance about 15 minutes after the effort started.
“The timeline in this incident is something the investigators are working to determine,” Gennaro said, when asked how long it took authorities to begin CPR.
The SIU probes incidents involving police that result in serious injury or death.
Mounieziel described Abdi as “a peaceful person, a quiet person — he never had any problem with anyone.
“It really upsets me to see him all bloody,” she said. “Ideally, police should be caring for people.”
Ali, friends with Abdi’s sister for nearly two decades, had known him since he arrived from Somalia five or six years ago, she said.
The news was “devastating” to his parents, brothers, sister and uncle who travelled from Toronto be at his side in Ottawa, she said.
“We all have questions. The community has questions. The family has questions. At the moment, we are trying to keep our emotion down and support the family and go through this difficult situation,” she said.
Doctors confirmed Abdi’s death at 3:17 p.m. Monday after failed resuscitation attempts, Ali said.
She noted the family is asking for privacy and prayers as they grieve and make plans for his funeral, though those plans are on hold awaiting the release of Abdi’s body because of the ongoing investigation.
Leslie Emory, executive director of Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization, urged the community to unite.
“What I would really like to see happening moving forward is that we all kind of come together to try to understand what happened, get transparency and complete answers and move forward as a community,” Emory said.
“If things need to change, we work together to change those,” she said. With files from Ebyan Abdigir