As Luis Santiago tells it, he was just reacting how any concerned father would have.
On Tuesday, Santiago was about to pick up his kids in Lowertown when he suddenly found himself locked in a violent struggle with a man accused of stabbing a woman to death.
He would end up punching the man, placing him in a chokehold and ultimately subduing him until security guards and police arrived on the scene.
“There’s always kids walking in this area, parents getting off work, picking up their kids at the daycare,” said Santiago, who shared the story of his harrowing encounter with CBC on Thursday.
“I was thinking in my head, you know, I need to do something.”
Ottawa police and paramedics were called to a home on Heney Street in Lowertown at around 4:40 p.m. Tuesday.
That was where they found 51-year-old Renée Descary with serious stab wounds.
Paramedics said Descary, an employee with the Canada Revenue Agency, was pronounced dead at the scene. A second person was taken to hospital in stable condition, they said.
The following morning, police announced they had charged 24-year-old Oliver Denia with second-degree murder and had labelled Descary’s death a femicide.
They also said several members of the public helped detain Denia, with some of them suffering minor injuries in the process. Their actions, police said, were “quite heroic.”
Neighbours of Lowertown homicide victim help detain suspect
Sporting a brace on his right forearm, Santiago told CBC how he’d been in his car Tuesday afternoon when he spotted a man going up and down the street, hitting vehicles.
Santiago said that when the man approached his car, he punched the window and tried to yank the door open. That was when Santiago called 911.
The man then veered away from his car, Santiago said, and went up to a house, kicking the door open and barging in.
Still on the phone with the 911 dispatcher, Santiago said he suddenly heard loud screams coming from inside the home.
“I get out of my car, and I see a young [woman] covered in blood and running out. And I see a guy with a knife — a big knife, a kitchen knife.”
As the man tried to chase the woman, he fell down the home’s steps, Santiago said.
Santiago said he rushed up to the man and kicked and punched him, causing him to drop his knife. The man then chased Santiago back to his car, jumped in the driver’s seat and tried to start it — but without success.
Santiago said he leapt into the passenger side and started punching the man in the face.
The pair eventually ended up back outside, where Santiago said he hit him again and put him in a chokehold until Ottawa Community Housing security officers arrived and placed the man in handcuffs.
“I [had] him in a headlock, and was like, ‘Please, God, give me more strength.’ Because he was really resisting.”
Emergency crews rushed to the scene, where they found Descary inside the home and took the man into custody. Santiago was rushed to the ambulance, too — he was covered in blood — and while he injured his forearm in the scuffle and got hit in the back of the head, he said he was not seriously hurt.
Ottawa police have said that the suspect in Tuesday’s homicide and the victim did not know each other.
Santiago said the man he subdued appeared to have been on drugs. In the days since, he said he’s been contemplating how badly things could have turned out that afternoon.
“My daughter goes to school right here. My daughter’s best friend lives [in the] house right over there,” he said. “So I’m thinking about the kids — and how many people he could have hurt.”
