Hamid Ayoub convicted of 2021 Baseline Road murder

Hamid Ayoub on Oct. 8 was given concurrent life sentences for the first-degree murder of his estranged wife and attempted murder of his daughter. The shocking crimes took place just around the corner from Algonquin College in June 2021.

The sentences mean Ayoub won’t have a chance for parole for 25 years.

It only took the jury one day to consider all the evidence and decide that beyond a reasonable doubt, Ayoub had criminally harassed his estranged wife Hanadi Mohamed and surviving daughter before the attack on June 15, 2021.

Both the Crown and the defence agreed that Ayoub had murdered his estranged wife and violently attacked his daughter. But the jury had to decide whether the crimes had been premeditated as part of ongoing persistent abuse or a frenzied impulsive attack, brought upon by anger at Mohamed for leaving him nine months prior.

“The murder was the execution of a plan,” said Superior Court Justice Kevin Phillips, reading from the Crown’s statement while instructing the jury on Oct. 7.

During the trial, the jury heard Ayoub stabbed Mohamed 39 times near the apartment building where Mohamed had moved to in order to escape the abuse she had been suffering since 2007. He then turned to his daughter and stabbed her 12 times until she pretended to be dead.

The attacks were carried out in broad daylight, witnessed by numerous passersby and the only warning Ayoub’s daughter had before being attacked was a scream from her mother.

Ayoub was arrested later that day at The Ottawa General Hospital where he went in search of treatment for an injury sustained during the attacks.

Ayoub’s daughter testified that the abuse suffered by her late mother was so bad, Ayoub had once “held a knife to her (Mohamed) and said ‘I am going to kill you.'”

The Crown told the jury Ayoub had placed a tracking device on Mohamed’s car, which she shared with her two children, in November 2020. The Crown argued Ayoub used it to monitor their location which suggested criminal harassment and that he had planned the attack.

“Since 2007, Ayoub dominated and demeaned a person who should’ve held his highest regard,” said Crown attorney Louise Tansey.

Ayoub’s defence argued that Ayoub’s bag containing, among other items, an expired passport and $8,000 was not a “getaway bag” but a bag for daily use. The fact that Ayoub had time to plan and consider the murder, along with a 20-centimetre knife in his possession, didn’t actually prove planning or deliberation, the defence argued.

The jury ultimately rejected those arguments.

Ayoub’s defence asked for a concurrent sentence of 14 years for the attack on his daughter but was denied by the judge, who ordered the maximum 25-year sentence served concurrently. A person convicted of first-degree murder is automatically given a life prison sentence with no chance for parole for 25 years.