The victim of Ottawa’s
third homicide
of the year was identified as 19-year-old Majed Al-Ar by Ottawa police Thursday morning.
Al-Ar was shot Wednesday afternoon on Bankfield Road near Prince of Wales Drive outside of Manotick. He had been taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries, but did not survive. Another man was taken to hospital in stable condition.
Two men were arrested by police. Their names, and any charges they may face, have not been released.
Ariel Lasher, who lives right in front of where the shooting took place, said she heard yelling coming from outside her home on Wednesday afternoon. When she went outside, she saw one person with a gunshot wound to the elbow, and another lying on the road.
Within the next few minutes, she said several emergency vehicles arrived on scene as sirens began to multiply. The road remained closed until about 2:30 a.m. Thursday while police investigated.
While Lasher said it’s common to see police cars in the area given the high number of accidents on the road, she said it was shocking to find out it was a homicide.
“I’m shaking still,” she told the Ottawa Citizen.
The Ottawa Paramedic Service was called to the scene at about 4:30 p.m., a paramedic spokesperson said.
Colleen Craig, another resident on Bankfield Road, said she also assumed it was a car accident when she heard sirens in the area. But as the police cars multiplied, she then began to suspect is was something more serious.
“There were two ambulances, three paramedic vehicles, 12 police SUVs and we just couldn’t believe it,” she said. “And I said to my husband, ‘this has got to be more than a car accident.’”
Looking on from her window, she said she saw police looking up and down the road and into the ditches on the side of the road until she went to bed that night.
A few single-family homes and a mechanic shop line the stretch of Bankfield where the shooting took place. Houses are spread out on large, rural properties, some backing onto barns and farmland. The two-lane road hosts an 80 km/h speed limit, though residents say cars often zoom by at much higher speeds.
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