Angry in the Great White North

From the Globe and Mail:

Yasmin's body was found 10 days ago stuffed in a garbage bag near a Rexdale townhouse development. She had been living in a rooming house in the area for about two weeks before she was killed.

On Friday, police arrested a man who lived downstairs, 32-year-old William Imona-Russel, and charged him with first-degree murder.

Yasmin's mother [Asha] has spent the days since drifting between anger and sorrow. Her family was one of the first Somali families to come to Canada. Her husband was a political dissident who arrived as a refugee in the early 1980s and has since returned to Somalia to help rebuild the country.

Imona-Russel was known to the police, awaiting trial on other serious charges:

Mr. Imona-Russel was out on bail at the time of the killing. He faces six charges relating to two alleged incidents of sexual assault in March of 2005, and was released on $1,000 bail in November, 2005.

He was applying for refugee status, and according to the victim from the previous assault, he was planning to pretend to be gay to stay in Canada:

The woman offered to help him find a good lawyer. Soon, she said, she noticed that every time she stepped out of her apartment, he was waiting by the elevator. As they spoke more frequently, she said, she noticed money started to go missing from her purse, as did her keys and her chequebook.

She eventually went to police, complaining he had stolen $8,000 from her in forged cheques. The police never pursued the case, she said. On March 3, 2005, she alleges Mr. Imona-Russel used a key he had copied to enter her apartment and sexually assault her. It happened again on March 13, 2005, she said, and he was arrested shortly after.

Mr. Imona-Russel is HIV positive. The woman said she underwent several tests after the alleged attacks, and a few weeks later was told she was also HIV positive.

Asha Ashareh saw Imona-Russel at his court appearance last Friday, and did not recognize him. We still don't know what the exact relationship between Imona-Russel and Yasmin Ashareh was, or what motive could have prompted the murder.

Update: Harsh Questions

After thinking about this story for a while, I have to say I have some uncomfortable questions to ask about the current set of charges against William Imona-Russel.

The woman claims that $8,000 dollars was taken from her bank account through the use of forged cheques. They must have good forgeries, especially if she had warned the bank after the first bad cheque was cashed. Indeed, once the bank knew of the first bad cheque, and she confirmed it came out of her stolen chequebook, the entire sequence of number cheques could have been frozen out.

But the bank didn't know, apparently, and multiple cheques went through, cashed by someone who knew she had a substantial amount of money in the bank.

OK, here's what I know. It's hard to steal money out of bank account. That's the main reason we use banks instead of shoe boxes for storing money (especially since a shoe box probably pays better interest and doesn't charge you to make a withdrawal). When a person has money stolen out of a bank account, it's usually because the person wrote the cheque himself. In other words, that person was a victim of fraud. Or that person wrote a cheque to someone, and then later regretted giving that person money. It's not theft, but regret.

I don't know that this is the case here, but to not notice multiple forged cheques amounting to $8,000?

The police didn't pursue the cheque case. Indifference? Maybe. Or maybe they weren't sure a crime had been committed based on details we are not privy to.

And then there were the two sexual assaults, ten days apart, in her apartment, each time Imona-Russel using keys she had noticed were missing to gain entry.

First, when the keys go missing, you change the locks. She didn't.

Did the keys really go missing?

And even if you neglect to change the locks soon after the keys go missing, you certainly do it immediately after a criminal gains entry to your apartment using copies of those missing keys and you suffer an assault as a result. She didn't.

Not very smart for a woman who earns enough to have $8,000 in her bank account. But you know who else isn't smart? Imona-Russel for coming back in ten days to assault her a second time. Criminals aren't the smartest bunch, of course. But by her own admission, Imona-Russel was a well-spoken man. Now why would anyone come back to assault the same woman twice in her own apartment?

First, the criminal would have to assume the copied keys wouldn't work as she surely would have changed the locks.

Second, even if the criminal had some reason to believe that she would not change the locks, he would have to assume in the aftermath of an attack, she would have taken steps to protect herself, meaning he would be facing a victim who might be armed with a baseball bat, or a knife, or even a gun.

Third, he would worry that the people in the area, and in the building in particular, are on the lookout for him, especially if he is known to have a copy of stolen keys with which to gain entrance to the apartment complex.

Coming back twice? If he had the $8,000 stolen from her account, why didn't he leave town? If he stayed in the area, why couldn't the police find him in the 10 days after the first assault? It's not even clear in the story that the police were informed of the first attack after it happened.

Now she is testing positive for HIV. Imona-Russel tests positive for HIV. Though not explicitly said, the article leads the reader to believe that she contracted the virus from one of the two assaults. No mention is made of the nature of the relationship prior to the assaults.

But contracting HIV from someone who has not told you his status would make anyone furious. You would be eager to see that person punished:

"It's been an ordeal," she said. "I don't know how I've made it this far."

She breathed a loud sigh of relief when she heard that Mr. Imona-Russel is back in jail.

I can't shake the feeling that there is lot more to this story.