A 28-year-old man who was fatally gunned down outside Hampton Park Plaza early Friday evening was the groom whose wedding was destroyed by gunfire at Ottawa’s Infinity Convention Centre last summer, CBC News has learned.
The tragic connection comes as police investigate whether the two cases are linked, and sheds some light on what they believe are related pockets of shootings.
According to police sources, Adam Abdullahi Elmi was sitting in a parked vehicle outside Fat Bastard’s Burrito just after 6 p.m. when a single gunman approached and shot him point-blank in the face.
The dinner hour shooting caused a panic at the plaza, near the intersection of Carling and Kirkwood avenues.
Ten months earlier, what should have been a celebration turned to mass hysteria as the approximately 200 guests at Elmi’s wedding on Sept 2, 2023, scrambled for safety when gunshots rang out in the convention centre’s parking lot.
The shooting rattled wedding guests, family members, bystanders and the larger Somali community in Ottawa, with some airing long-standing grievances with how police have investigated crimes against Somali men.
CBC News has learned Elmi was not among those injured in the shooting at his wedding.
Police say multiple shooters sprayed the crowd outside the reception hall with bullets, ultimately striking two innocent bystanders dead and wounding another six men.
Guests at the wedding described to CBC News hiding in a bathroom and closet after hearing the gunshots.
Two men from Toronto, 26-year-old Said Mohamed Ali and 29-year-old Abdishakur Abdi-Dahir, died in that shooting. Police described them as innocent bystanders who were not the intended targets of the gunfire
Police have said Ali came to Canada early last summer from an undisclosed country. Abdi-Dahir had started a career as an engineer.
Police have announced no arrests in Elmi’s death, nor in the September shootings.
Police now say they suspect multiple shooters were involved in the attack at the wedding after they found more than 50 rounds of ammunition had been fired.
Police haven’t released any suspect descriptions, and have said they’ve been met with lack of cooperation from witnesses.
Investigators will not say whether they believe the two shootings are related beyond the Elmi connection, but have said they are “pursuing all leads” in this case.
Detectives are asking anyone with information or video footage of either incident to call Ottawa police.
