Malek Moussa
Ottawa, ON / Feb. 21, 1993
On the evening of February 20, 1993 several teenagers gathered in an apartment on St. Joseph Boulevard. The apartment was a "party place" frequented by students from a nearby high school.
During the evening a 16-year-old male began talking about "doing a taxi driver" while playing with a long piece of wire. He tried to talk others at the party into participating and was eventually able to recruit an 18-year-old man. The 16-year-old planned to use the wire as a garrote while the 18-year-old grabbed the driver's money.
Sometime after midnight the two left the apartment armed with the wire and a knife. Before they returned about 45 minutes later they attacked Blue Line driver Malek Moussa, 42, stabbing him 26 times.
Moussa managed to reach a nearby house and rang the doorbell. He was covered with so much blood that the residents mistook him for their son as they dragged him into the house and called the police. An ambulance arrived about 15 minutes later, but Moussa died before he reached hospital.
The two criminals returned to the apartment about 45 minutes after they left. One of the teenagers present testified that the 18-year-old's pants were covered with blood and that he told of stabbing Moussa about 20 times while the 16-year-old held the driver by the throat with the wire garrote. "I had to kill him," he said.
The killer showered and changed his clothes and instructed the teenage witness to get rid of a plastic grocery bag that evidently contained the bloody pants. The teenager dropped them in a nearby dumpster out of fear, and then hung around the apartment until 4 a.m. so that the killer wouldn't suspect him of going to the police.
When he learned that the killer and his accomplice were in custody, the teenager led police to the dumpster. He testified that the killer "didn't look that troubled" but that the accomplice "looked pretty disturbed."
At the trial of the 16-year-old a psychologist testified the youth had a "pro-criminal" attitude. He would talk of committing robberies and believed the consequences were minimal. Nevertheless he had no criminal record and his family was supportive. "With proper treatment" and "if motivated" the youth could be rehabilitated in a few years.
The Crown pressed for a three-year sentence -- the longest possible under the provisions of the Young Offenders Act -- but the judge refused to grant the request on the grounds that the accused had already served two years in custody awaiting trial. Citing his successful completion of an anger management course, the she concluded that the youth was on his way to rehabilitation and sentenced him to one year of open custody in a group home, plus two years of probation.
The sentence outraged Moussa's family and Ottawa cab drivers. A week after the decision about 150 taxis placarded with pictures of Moussa snaked through downtown Ottawa to the Parliament buildings sounding their horns and disrupting noon-hour traffic.
At his own trial, 18-year-old claimed that his accomplice had done the stabbing and that he himself had participated in the crime partly under the influence of drugs and partly because he was goaded into it by other teenagers at the apartment. He admitted pulling the knife on Moussa, but claimed he dropped it in panic when Moussa grabbed it. The accomplice, he said, then picked up the knife and stabbed Moussa.
During this trial one Crown witness damaged his own credibility by taking drugs and drinking three mugs of beer before appearing in court. He had to interrupt his testimony twice to go to the bathroom and admitted that he was so high on drugs while at the apartment that his memory was impaired.
The jury convicted the killer of second degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 15 years.
Moussa came from Lebanon originally. After his death his widow returned there with their three children. Other family members remained in Canada including a brother who was also a cab driver. He gave up driving after Moussa's death.
The murder was the inspiration for a 23-minute video called The Last Fare. Written, directed and acted by local cab drivers, the video was intended to raise public awareness of the dangers they face. It included a graphic dramatization of the attack on Moussa.
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