Ottawa police investigate Christmas Day homicide in Hintonburg

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Ottawa Police are investigating the homicide of a 46-year-old woman who died in Hintonburg on Christmas Day.

Police said Jolene Arreak died at 6:10 p.m. on Spadina Avenue. Another victim survived the attack and was treated in hospital before being released, according to police.

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.

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He was set to appear in court on Boxing Day.

Police tape lined the front and back of a home on Spadina Avenue on the morning of Dec. 26, as a police car idled in the driveway. Next door, neighbour Julie Plourde, who has lived in the area for 17 years, said the news of the homicide was “a real big shock.”

“My kids are frightened, it’s nonsense on Christmas,” Plourde said.

“That happened right next door to our house, we’ve been living here for so long and we never, ever, ever would have thought this would have happened.”

Plourde said Arreak’s uncle, JP Foo, has lived in the home for more than 40 years, and that he resided there with his son, Manasi. She identified the elder Foo as the surviving victim and said that he and Arreak had been having Christmas dinner at his daughter’s house before returning to the Spadina residence at around 6 p.m.

That’s when the incident took place.

Plourde, who had family over earlier in the evening, said she heard nothing at the time, which is surprising given that she can usually hear everything from people talking to the toilet flushing in the unit next to her.

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At around 6 p.m., Plourde was putting her children in the bath when she saw there was an ambulance outside. She immediately texted a neighbour. A few hours later, at about 10 p.m., Plourde found out what had happened when police came to her door to question her and tell her not to go into the backyard. She said she later spoke to the older Foo’s daughter on the morning of Dec. 26.

While Foo and his son live in the home, Arreak was often there, Plourde said. “He’s physically OK, heartbroken, of course,” Plourde said of JP Foo.

Plourde said she didn’t know Foo’s son, Manasi, very well and that she would often see him in the backyard with his cat. Plourde said Arreak was “amazing,” and always around to help her uncle clean the house.

Arreak was supposed to hang around for a bit at the Foo residence before going to another Christmas dinner on Dec. 25, but “never made it.”

Plourde said she questions whether there’s anything she could have done had she heard the incident at the time.

“I feel like the body might have been in the back because they wouldn’t let anybody by, they wouldn’t let anybody in, everything was blocked off and we just saw the ambulance leave which was transporting JP but we didn’t know at the time who it was and what had happened until this morning,” said Plourde.

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Another neighbour, Jennifer Ferreira, said she got home at around 6:30 p.m. on Christmas Day, and that “there were cops everywhere.”

“We were up all night because we weren’t allowed outside,” Ferreira said. “I didn’t move from my living room.”

Since being released from the hospital, she said the older Foo has been staying with a relative.

“These people have been our neighbours our whole life,” Ferreira said, adding that it’s a tight-knit community where neighbours call each other if something happens. “It’s shocking.”

Ferreira said Arreak was loud and very friendly, often outside drinking in a chair near the front door of the home.

“In the summertime you couldn’t walk by here without her trying to offer you something,” Ferreira said. “She’d get all excited for a friend or somebody to chat with.”

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