A jury has found Hamid Ayoub guilty of first-degree murder for killing his estranged wife, and guilty of the attempted murder of their daughter in 2021.
Both sides in his trial agreed that on June 15, 2021, he parked his car near the home Hanadi Mohamed, 50, shared with their two children, about 20 minutes after getting an email from a tracking device he had hidden months earlier in a vehicle used by the children.
With murderous intent — and after years of physical and emotional abuse that caused his family to leave him and call 911 multiple times — he stabbed Mohamed 39 times in broad daylight on busy Baseline Road.
Then he turned the knife on their 22-year-old daughter, stabbing her 12 times before jogging back to his car and driving away.
Ayoub was arrested hours later at The Ottawa Hospital’s General campus while seeking treatment for a cut he sustained during the attack.
The jury was asked to decide whether Ayoub’s murder of Mohamed was planned and deliberate, or committed amid a pattern of criminal harassment — the two routes to first-degree murder the Crown argued for — or, as the defence contended, an impulsive explosion of rage and violence that favoured a finding of guilt for second-degree murder.
As for the attack on his daughter, the jury was going over whether to accept the Crown’s theory that Ayoub meant to kill her (attempted murder), or the defence theory that he was enraged when she tried to stop him from killing her mother (aggravated assault).
Ayoub, 63, pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and attempted murder in Ottawa Superior Court at the beginning of his trial on Sept. 16.
Crown prosecutors Louise Tansey and Cecilia Bouzane rejected his guilty pleas to the lesser charges.
Jury deliberations began Monday and the verdict was reached just minutes after they resumed Tuesday morning.
Ayoub was given two life sentences to be served concurrently and with no chance for parole for 25 years. The defence argued that Ayoub should have been given the chance of parole after 14 years for the attempted murder, but was denied.