Ottawa double-killing victims were Somali sisters

Two Somali-Canadian sisters were killed in a double homicide at a south-end housing co-op Friday night, according to one of their friends.

Suad Mohamed said she is heartbroken after hearing her friends were killed at a home on McCarthy Road.

The friend identified them as Nasiba Noor, 29, and Asma Noor, 32, of Ottawa.

“Both of them were the nicest people you would ever meet,” Mohamed said Saturday by phone in Edmonton.

She has known the two women for about 10 years and says she has kept in touch after moving out west. She said Nasiba taught her the Qur’an and both sisters were well-known and involved in Ottawa’s Somali community.

“There are people that live in the city that are contributors; contribute to the good of the city. They were that kind of people that you can really say that about, and not just say it because it’s something people say when people die. Really, they were the definition of good citizens.”

“As long as it was good, they would partake in it. It’s too bad that they had to die so early,” she added.

Police were called to the 3200 block of McCarthy Road at around 9 p.m. and found the two deceased women inside a unit in a row of townhomes.

Anver Malam, imam and founder of the Jami Omar Mosque on Old Richmond Road, said there will be a funeral for the sisters Sunday at 1 p.m., but people are welcome to begin praying at noon before the service. A burial will follow at the Ottawa Muslim Cemetery.

The imam said the focus going forward will be to help the family in their grief.

“We are just trying to understand what’s going on and try to console the family members for their unfortunate loss,” Malam said. “It’s very tragic.”

A Sun reporter spotted a man standing in the cold near a set of train tracks not far from the crime scene after the killings. That man, whose identity has not been released by police, was later arrested and remains in custody. No charges have been in laid in the ongoing investigation.

Police were also speaking with family members of the victims late Friday.

A heavy dumping of snow overnight Friday and Saturday morning hampered officers’s efforts to comb the area surrounding the train tracks for evidence.

The sisters’ killings were the 23rd and 24th in the city this year.

That number now ties 1995’s total of 24 homicides as the highest for a single year in the past three decades.

On average, over the past 15 years, there have been about 10 slayings a year in the nation’s capital.

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