Public inquiry beginning into 2019 killing of Montreal mother, her two sons

Warning: this article contains graphic details that some readers may find disturbing.

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A public inquiry into a 2019 triple homicide that claimed the lives of a mother and her two children in Pointe-aux-Trembles, in Montreal, is scheduled to begin Monday at the Joliette justice service point.

In July 2022, chief coroner Pascale Descary ordered a public inquiry into the killing of Dahia Khellaf, 42, and her two sons – four-year-old Adam and two-year-old Aksil – and the suicide of their spouse and father Nabil Yssaad, 46.

Descary’s announcement followed the filing of four reports from coroner Alain Manseau on the killings.

Yssaad threw himself from the sixth floor of a Lanaudière hospital Dec. 10, 2019. While trying to contact his family, police discovered their three bodies in Khellaf’s bed. According to Manseau, the three were strangled in their sleep with an electric cable.

The couple had been united by an arranged marriage during a trip by Khellaf to Algeria, her country of origin, in 2012. She then returned alone and sponsored the entry of her husband, who arrived in Canada in 2014.

The relationship deteriorated upon the arrival of Yssaad in Quebec in 2014. Coroner Manseau’s reports read like a long, growing series of contemptuous remarks about her, threats, and violent gestures that gave rise to repeated interventions by the police. Khellaf decided to get a divorce in 2018, but abandoned that plan when she discovered she was not eligible for legal aid.

Khellaf she went to her local police station where she reported her husband for death threats in August 2018.

Thus began a round of arrests, indictments, releases, non-compliance with conditions and constant lies to the authorities by Yssaad, who openly mocked, even in front of the judges, the conditions imposed on him.

A year-and-a-half of legal proceedings for domestic violence followed one another, during which seven different prosecutors followed one another, the last of whom, at the beginning of December 2019, had practically no experience in such matters.

In his report, Manseau criticized both the police and judicial authorities, as well as the various stakeholders who did not take the trouble to adequately monitor the situation despite the obvious dangerousness of the individual.

“New facts have been brought to the attention of the Coroner’s Office which mean that the Chief Coroner judges that it will be useful to hear witnesses in order to establish the circumstances of the four deaths with the greatest possible accuracy,” the Coroner’s Office indicated in a July 20, 2022, press release.

Coroner Andrée Kronström was appointed to chair the public inquiry which begins Monday. She will be assisted by Roxanne Lefebvre, public inquiry prosecutor.

The public hearings will take place Oct. 23-27, and Nov. 6-10.

—This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews