New details emerge from deadly 2023 Ottawa wedding shooting

Wereley says evidence collected at the site suggests that at least two suspects opened fire on the crowd gathered in front of the convention centre; at least one person shot back. In all, around 50 rounds of ammunition were fired. Spent casings collected to the north and south of the Infinity suggest the shooters used semi-automatic handguns of multiple calibres.

These events, described by Wereley as an “unimaginable act of violence and reckless disregard for human life,” unfolded a few minutes after 10 p.m. on a Saturday night.

The Infinity is part of a busy commercial strip located just north of Ottawa International Airport that also includes several chain hotels, a Park’N Fly, a Royal Oak pub and a Lone Star Texas Grill. The gathering targeted by the gunmen was one of two weddings being celebrated at the facility that night.

Many of the 300 or so guests in attendance, some from as far away as Toronto and Ohio, had to dive for cover after they began hearing gunshots outside.

Although Farah says he prefers to take a more charitable view — “if I give them the benefit of the doubt, it’s they’re incompetent” — he says some members of Ottawa’s Somali community have less patience, and believe that Ottawa police don’t care.

He’s still in shock at what took place at the convention centre and talks about similar worries every time his family has gone to a wedding since. “I have to think about what the security situation will be. Are there guards? Did we hire private security?” he says. “And before that incident, we never thought about that. We felt that we were safe. Ottawa is a safe place. In America, mass shootings happen all the time, but in Canada? Specifically in Ottawa?”

He describes the areas where Ottawa’s Somali communities live as both unsafe and over-policed.

“We are over-policed and under-served,” says Farah, who owns an immigration consultancy and who ran for the NDP in Ottawa South against former premier Dalton McGuinty during Ontario’s 2011 provincial election. “The police are there, but there’s no service, there’s no protection, there’s no security for this community. We just live by the grace of God, that’s all.”

Greg Brown, a former Ottawa police homicide detective who now teaches at Carleton University, says crimes of this nature can be a challenge for investigators to solve.

“There should have been tonnes of witnesses and people just do not want to come forward,” Brown says of such cases, adding: “I would never sell witnesses short because it’s a life-altering decision to cooperate with police and the prosecution, especially in an organized-crime or gang homicide.”

Mohamud says police will continue dealing with symptoms if the city and province do not address the systemic problems by funding culturally grounded treatment centres, transition homes and youth facilities. He believes police themselves are aware of the dynamic: “I’ve participated in meetings with them and they’re very open that there’s a history of over-policing, which leads to over-charging, which leads to incarceration.”

While still a live matter, the suit has stalled due to an undisclosed complication, and lawyers on both sides are not talking.

Meanwhile, questions persist about the wedding homicides and what motivated them.

According to another police source, Elmi was known to law enforcement more for his association with criminals than for any criminal activity of his own.

Nevertheless, police have not ruled out the possibility that he himself was the target of the wedding attack. He “declined to provide a statement or cooperate with the investigation so that made it difficult and left many unanswered questions,” writes Wereley. “Without specific information, police have to keep an open mind and turn their mind to all possibilities, including the possibility that Mr. Elmi was a target.”

What’s not in question is the role that the wedding itself played in the attack.