Wait: There's More ... There's Always More ...

The latest homicide victim of the year in Ottawa has been identified.  Great surprise there; this was not a random killing, but a gangland one.  Peyman Hatami, 31, shot in the chest outside a Chinese restaurant, identified as a debt collector for convicted killer and drug dealer Wahab Dadshani.  An enforcer for the man convicted of manslaughter inside the Midway Family Fun Park, in 2003. 

The murder weapon was found after an intensive search of the grounds near where Hatami's body lay, adjacent a strip mall.  The murderer has not yet been identified.  With little doubt, his name too will be familiar to investigators, just as Peyman Hatami's was. 

He had threatened one man, assaulted another in 2009 outside a strip club in Vanier, which led to a high-speed chase before he was arrested. And at that time one of the tools of his trade was found in the car, a loaded MS Safari .45-calibre handgun.  "I want it known that it is my gun and I take responsibility for the gun offence", he claimed nobly. 

Whereupon he was sentenced to a further two years and four months in federal prison. 

Hayder Al-Ebadi, 18, was shot in the back of the head in the lobby of an apartment building on Prince of Wales Drive. Dr. Warsame Okie, 25, was shot also in the lobby of the building.  Matthew Kalli, 20, was charged with two counts of second-degree murder in that shooting episode.  And was sentenced at trial in 2011 to two 15-year-sentences for manslaughter.  Unfortunately not to be served consecutively. 

The youthful high spirits and sense of adventure of these young men certainly serve to make Ottawa a lively place.  Deadly, as well.  Fortunately, they are murdering one another.  Like the gangland slayings that take place in Toronto, there will be further incidents, and some of them will inadvertently, carelessly, obliviously, take the lives of innocent bystanders.

It is peculiar that exposure to a social contract that holds crime and particularly brutal violent crime in such social disrepute has done nothing to persuade these young men to gear their lives differently.  Whose parents immigrated from tribal societies which traditionally demonstrated their enmity toward one another through violent means.

Obviously a life of crime and intrigue is far more attractive to them than anything that might be construed as normal, peaceful and law-abiding.