Ottawa mass killing: Lawyer says accused Sri Lankan student is in protective custody

Febrio De-Zoysa, the teenager accused in the brutal killing of six Sri Lankans in Ottawa, is now held in protective custody, his lawyer Ewan Lyttle has said.

“I can comment that he’s in protective custody. He’s doing OK,” Lyttle was quoted as saying by Canadian media reports. Inmates are often held in protective custody to shield them from other prisoners.

Lyttle’s comments came after De-Zoysa made a brief court appearance that took place by phone on Thursday (March 14).

De-Zoysa’s matter was adjourned until March 28, to give Lyttle time to receive and begin reviewing disclosure from the Crown, a process he suggested would span months.

According to Ottawa Police, De-Zoysa had come to Canada as an international student and had been living with the victims, who were also newcomers from Sri Lanka.

Six people – a mother, her 4 young children and a family acquaintance – were knifed to death inside a townhouse the family was renting on Berrigan Drive near Palmadeo Drive in Ottawa’s southern suburb of Barrhaven in the late hours of last Wednesday (March 06).

The victims were identified as Darshani Dilanthika Ekanayake (35 years), Inaka (7 years), Ashwini (4 years), Rinyana (2 years), Kelly (24 weeks) and Gamini Amarakoon (40 years).

Meanwhile, Ekanayake’s husband Dhanushka Wickramasinghe, who was hospitalized with critical injuries sustained in the attack, is now in a stable condition.

The 19-year-old was arrested at the scene on March 06 and is charged with six counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. The killer’s motive still remain unknown. 

The following day, Algonquin College president Claude Brulé released a statement confirming that De-Zoysa was a student at the institution and that his last semester of attendance was Winter 2023.

During Thursday’s appearance before Justice of Peace Karen Baum, the Crown entered new information to correct the spellings of some of the victims’ names that had been entered at De-Zoysa’s first court appearance last week. The charges remained unchanged.

Waiving his rights to arraignment made it necessary for the full list of charges against De-Zoysa to be read into the court record again.

After registering his client’s language of choice as English, Lyttle has requested an adjournment until March 28. According to foreign media, the entire matter has taken less than four minutes.

Speaking to reporters outside the courthouse, Lyttle has not commented when asked if his client might use mental health as a defence or if he understood what had happened.

Lyttle has met with De-Zoysa both by video and in person at the Innes Road jail. “He’s in protective custody. He’s doing OK,” he said.

Lyttle said he had also been in contact with De-Zoysa’s family, but would not say where they were, only that they were not in Sri Lanka.

“They’re obviously very upset,” he added. 

Against this backdrop, Google has taken steps to terminate the YouTube channel associated with the 19-year-old to which he reportedly had posted videos of the ‘Minecraft’ video game. The tech giant said if a user’s off-platform behavior harms the YouTube community, they may take action in accordance with YouTube’s creator responsibility guidelines.

The suspect is facing a lengthy legal battle, according to criminal law experts who said the case could take two to three years to work its way through the court system.

Daphne Gilbert, a professor of criminal law at the University of Ottawa told MSN news agency that the accused will likely go through extensive psychiatric evaluations to determine whether or not he’s fit to stand trial.

--with inputs from agencies