Homicide victim Egal Daud buried Friday after mosque service

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Homicide victim Egal Daud buried Friday after mosque service

An Ottawa homicide victim and Algonquin College student was remembered during Friday prayers as more than 1,000 worshippers gathered at the Assalam Mosque.

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An Ottawa homicide victim and Algonquin College student was remembered during Friday prayers as more than 1,000 worshippers gathered at the Assalam Mosque. Egal Daud, 30, was found dead in his car Sunday morning in a parking lot on Northview Road in Nepean after being reported missing by his family five days earlier.

Police said Daud, the city’s fifth homicide victim of the year, had been shot. No arrest has yet been made in the case.

A funeral service was held for Daud at the Assalam Mosque on St. Laurent Boulevard where friends and family gathered to pray for him alongside regular Friday worshippers. His body was carried into the crowded prayer room in a simple wooden coffin draped with a green cover — the colour of Islam.

In his sermon, visiting Edmonton Imam Osman Ali told worshippers they must always be prepared for death by immediately embracing a righteous path. "Today he (Daud) is gone,” he said, "but yesterday he was here.”

Ali warned that life can end suddenly and unexpectedly in a plane crash, with a slip on the ice or with a gunshot, and that every Muslim must be prepared at any moment to face Allah with the completed "book” of his own life.

Daud was later buried in the Ottawa Muslim Cemetery on Manotick Station Road.

Daud had gone back to school in 2015 to study heating, ventilation, refrigeration and air conditioning at Algonquin College after working for several years at a local janitorial company. Earlier in his life, he had served jail time for drug trafficking.

Friends have described Daud as a kind-hearted man who had been working to improve himself. He was one of five siblings in a tight knit Somali-Canadian family.

"It is a really tough time for us,” said his sister, Zuhur Daud.

Anyone with information about Daud’s shooting is asked to call the Ottawa police major crime unit at 613-236-1222, ext. 5493.