The husband of a woman found dead at a west-end highrise on the weekend will appear in court today, accused of manslaughter in what has become Ottawa’s third homicide in eight days and fifth of the year.
Demetrios Angelis, 38, was taken into custody immediately after police responded to a 9-1-1 call at 509-30 McEwen Avenue around 2 p.m. Sunday afternoon. Police yesterday charged the man in the death of his wife Lien Angelis, 42.
Police held Angelis in custody overnight Sunday for questioning and yesterday charged him after autopsy results showed the victim had died of foul play. Police did not release the exact cause of death, though reports indicate the woman had been strangled and wrapped in a carpet.
On Sunday, neighbours watched as police brought Angelis out of the building in handcuffs and in sock feet, where paramedics examined him before he was taken away in a patrol car. The couple’s two children, a girl around eight-years-old and a younger brother, were taken away in an ambulance.
Three women have been killed in Ottawa in just over a week, beginning on May 31 when police say Ryan Sawchuk killed his former fiancé, Alicia Bateman, in her Orleans home before hanging himself, and followed on June 4 when the badly beaten body of Pam Kosmack, 39, was discovered beside a city bike path, less than a kilometre from the scene of Sunday’s slaying.
Residents in the area say two homicides in the space of three days in their usually quiet vicinity are shocking, but not a reflection of the neighbourhood.
“It could have happened anywhere. It doesn’t mean anything about this building,” said Morris Monette, who lives at 30 McEwen Ave.
A resident of a building across the street insisted yesterday to Metro that the neighbourhood was safe. Yet she later insisted that her name not be used, for fear of retribution from the still at-large assailant in the Kosmack death.
“It’s scary. This is two murders now and we’re right in the middle of it,” she said.”
