KATE LUNAU,
The Gazette (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)
Son, 7, found father's body; Community leaders at loss to explain what might have triggered killings
The curtains were drawn yesterday on the apartment above a north-end Villeray sewing shop where only one day before, a 7-year-old boy awoke to find both his parents dead in what police are calling a murder-suicide.
Members of Montreal's Cambodian community, to which the family belonged, expressed shock upon learning the 53-year-old man had apparently stabbed his wife before killing himself in their apartment.
"They were a very respectable family," said Bun Korn Yun of the Cambodian Congress of Canada, a community organization.Yun was personally acquainted with them.
The couple's son is now staying with relatives, he said.
Police would not confirm the family members' names yesterday.
Homicide investigators couldn't be contacted yesterday to determine if they had learned anything of the circumstances of the killing.
Muy Len Pong, also of the Cambodian Congress of Canada, said many members of the 20,000-strong Cambodian community in Montreal and Laval are in shock.
"We are a very close community," Pong said. "This is very hard for us to understand."
Police said the boy awoke Saturday morning to find his father's body in the kitchen. Not knowing what to do, he called relatives, who arrived and telephoned 911.
Police were called to the apartment on St. Hubert St. south of Villeray St. at 8:40 a.m. Soon after they arrived, police discovered the boy's mother, 47, in another room of the apartment. She had been stabbed to death. Police said her husband killed her before killing himself.
According to Yun, the couple moved to Canada from Cambodia in the 1980s. They had been married seven years, he said. Yun was unaware of any problems in their marriage.
"They were a bit reserved," Yun said. "They did not go out very often."
Those who live and work near where the family lived expressed similar sentiments yesterday. Most said they had never met the family, or that they kept to themselves.
Around noon yesterday, two men could be seen moving boxes and bags from the apartment and loading them into a car. One of the men, who did not provide a name, identified himself as a relative of the dead couple.
"It's not that I don't want to talk about it," he said. "It's that I can't bring myself to talk about it."
The deaths bring to 40 the number of homicides in Montreal this year. There were 30 at the corresponding time last year.
klunau@thegazette.canwest.com
The curtains were drawn yesterday on the apartment above a north-end Villeray sewing shop where only one day before, a 7-year-old boy awoke to find both his parents dead in what police are calling a murder-suicide.
Members of Montreal's Cambodian community, to which the family belonged, expressed shock upon learning the 53-year-old man had apparently stabbed his wife before killing himself in their apartment.
"They were a very respectable family," said Bun Korn Yun of the Cambodian Congress of Canada, a community organization.Yun was personally acquainted with them.
The couple's son is now staying with relatives, he said.
Police would not confirm the family members' names yesterday.
Homicide investigators couldn't be contacted yesterday to determine if they had learned anything of the circumstances of the killing.
Muy Len Pong, also of the Cambodian Congress of Canada, said many members of the 20,000-strong Cambodian community in Montreal and Laval are in shock.
"We are a very close community," Pong said. "This is very hard for us to understand."
Police said the boy awoke Saturday morning to find his father's body in the kitchen. Not knowing what to do, he called relatives, who arrived and telephoned 911.
Police were called to the apartment on St. Hubert St. south of Villeray St. at 8:40 a.m. Soon after they arrived, police discovered the boy's mother, 47, in another room of the apartment. She had been stabbed to death. Police said her husband killed her before killing himself.
According to Yun, the couple moved to Canada from Cambodia in the 1980s. They had been married seven years, he said. Yun was unaware of any problems in their marriage.
"They were a bit reserved," Yun said. "They did not go out very often."
Those who live and work near where the family lived expressed similar sentiments yesterday. Most said they had never met the family, or that they kept to themselves.
Around noon yesterday, two men could be seen moving boxes and bags from the apartment and loading them into a car. One of the men, who did not provide a name, identified himself as a relative of the dead couple.
"It's not that I don't want to talk about it," he said. "It's that I can't bring myself to talk about it."
The deaths bring to 40 the number of homicides in Montreal this year. There were 30 at the corresponding time last year.
klunau@thegazette.canwest.com
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