Jolene Arreak’s death was just the latest tragedy for her family.
The family of an Ottawa woman who was the city’s 25th homicide victim this year is sadly no stranger to tragedy.
Jolene Arreak died at a Hintonburg residence on Spadina Avenue on Christmas Day. Arreak is just the latest family member that was the victim of a homicide after her sister, Vivian Sula Enuaraq, and two nieces died in an apparent murder-suicide in Iqaluit almost 15 years ago.
In June 2011, police found Enuaraq and her two daughters, seven-year-old Alexandra Degrasse and two-year-old Aliyah Degrasse, dead inside their family home after they discovered Enuaraq’s common-law husband dead at an Iqaluit cemetery, lying next to a rifle.
“I wish I could afford to go where Jolene’s mom lives because I would go be with her,” said Susan Martin, a family friend of the Arreaks for more than a decade who now lives in Calgary.
In events that likely feel all too familiar for the family, Ottawa police are investigating the homicide of Arreak, who was 46 years old.
The homicide broke the city’s yearly total record of 24 set in 1995 and 2016. Another victim survived the Christmas Day attack and was treated in hospital before being released, according to police. Neighbours have identified that man as Arreak’s uncle, J.P. Foo.
Police said they arrested a 35-year-old man named Manasi Foo and charged him with second-degree murder. He was also charged with attempted murder. He appeared in court on Boxing Day and was held in custody, according to police.
Audrey Redman hosted a Christmas Dinner that Arreak had planned to attend. She only found out the next day that her friend had been the victim of a homicide.
Evening Update
“We’re really gonna miss her,” Redman said, adding that Arreak “had no fear” and was very trusting. “It breaks all our hearts.”
Neecha Dupuis, another friend, said she was supposed to pick Arreak up to take her to Redman’s for dinner, but didn’t do so after she hadn’t heard from her.
“I probably would have walked into all of that. It would have been horrible for me and a lot of our friends, but I was shielded from all that, I guess. I wasn’t meant to go that way,” Dupuis said. “There’s so many people in Ottawa that are so upset right now.”
Friends remembered Arreak as a happy, friendly and spiritual person who was always willing to help.
“Jolene is really special,” said Redman, who is a residential school survivor and whose sister was murdered in Vancouver. “Such a sweet girl. I’ve never really met anybody like her.”
Redman said she called Arreak a “firefly” because “she was so bright and she always just got so much light to everywhere she went.”
Martin said Arreak was “a beautiful person” who “had a good heart and a good spirit.”
“Whether she knew you or not and you needed a hug, she gave you a hug. If you needed her to sit down, to talk about anything, she was that person.”
Martin, who has also lost a daughter to murder, said the Arreak family had lost five family members in the past 15 years. The death of Arreak’s aunt, Deborah Evaluarjuk, was documented in the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in 2018.
Redman said the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls was “a reoccurring problem.”
“Our people, especially our women, are put in these situations where they end up being the ones that are the victims of it all,” Redman said. “I think every First Nations family across Canada, I’m sure each one of us, of all of our families, we’ve lost people that way, murder or suicide or missing.”
With Postmedia News files
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