A picture is quickly developing of just who Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was; a young man with a lengthy criminal past who had come to Ottawa to get a passport. The 32-year-old was staying at a homeless shelter, the Ottawa Mission. He hadn't seen his mother in years until last week, when he had lunch with her, probably here in Ottawa where she lived.
Since early October, police confirm, Zehaf-Bibeau had been living at the Ottawa Mission.
‘I knew he was trouble,’ says Ottawa Mission resident Abubakir Abdel Kareem. Abdel Kareem says he spoke with Zehaf-Bibeau often and said the young man had a drug problem and had come to Ottawa from Vancouver to get a passport.
‘He told me I just want to get my passport, get out of this country and get treated,’ Abdel Kareem said today outside the Mission.
RCMP confirmed this afternoon that Bibeau had applied for a passport to go to Syria and that he may have held extremist beliefs. They were doing a background check on him.
‘We do have information to suggest there was an association with some individuals who may have shared radical views,’ RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson said today at a news conference in Ottawa, ‘As to how he got a gun, that is part of our investigation.’
Ottawa Police confirm they seized Bibeau's belongings at the Mission.
Mission resident Joseph MacDonald says he had seen Bibeau over the last 10 days, wandering the halls, praying all the time.
‘He kept to himself,’ says MacDonald, ‘he never said too much to people. You'd see him praying at the end of the hallway there.’
Abdel Kareem says he noticed Bibeau’s demeanor changing over the last few days.
‘He always read the Koran when he came here,’ he told CTV Ottawa, ‘but the last three days he was not reading, because he was back to the drug.’
Abdel Kareem believes Bibeau was using crack cocaine.
In a statement to Associated Press, Bibeau's parents apologized for all the pain and chaos their son created.
‘He was lost and did not fit in, wrote Susan Bibeau, ‘We have no explanation to offer. I am mad at our son, I don't understand and part of me wants to hate him.’
Susan Bibeau is a high-profile government worker who lived in Ottawa and Montreal.
Her Ottawa neighbours were reluctant to talk. And while RCMP reiterated today that Bibeau was not among the ninety individuals they were closely monitoring, some neighbours believe there was a police presence at Susan Bibeau’s west end Ottawa house earlier in the week.
‘I'm Muslim,’ says the one neighbor, ‘but I don't believe in these things. He's Canadian. He's born here; this has got nothing to do with Islam, that's my view.’
Another resident added, ‘I am shocked, very shocked. I feel very sorry for her (Susan Bibeau) for her family and especially for the victim.’
Police also now know the car Bibeau was driving, a beige Toyota, had been purchased on October 21st, one day before the shooting, and that he was prohibited from owning a weapon. Somehow, he still managed to get one.
