WARNING: This story contains details of murder, including of children, and mentions thoughts of suicide.
A 20-year-old man has pleaded guilty to murdering four children, their mother, and a close family friend in a mass stabbing in Ottawa last year.
Febrio De Zoysa has also pleaded guilty to one count of attempted murder for his attack on the father of the family, Dhanushka Wickramasinghe, who was seriously injured.
At the time of the stabbings on March 6, 2024, De Zoysa was a 19-year-old international student living with the Wickramasinghes in their basement in Ottawa’s Barrhaven suburb.
He was arrested at the scene without incident after first responders arrived and was charged with six counts of first-degree murder the following day.
De Zoysa stood with his lawyer Ewan Lyttle in Superior Court in Ottawa Thursday morning and pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree murder of the following victims:
The sentences for those murders are automatic: life in prison with no ability to apply for parole for 25 years.
For the remaining two victims, mother Darshani Ekanayake, 35; and their baby Kelly Wickramasinghe, just two months old, De Zoysa pleaded down to the lesser included offences of second-degree murder.
Pleading down is commonplace in plea bargains.
Those sentences will be partly automatic: second-degree murders result in life sentences as well, but the periods of parole ineligibilty will be up to Justice Kevin Phillips to decide after input from the Crown and defence.
The shocking incident — described by Ottawa’s mayor as one of the most shocking acts of violence the capital has ever seen — generated headlines across Canada and gripped Sri Lankan media.
The Wickramasinghes were newcomers to Canada from Sri Lanka (except for the baby) and so was Amarakoon, who was working to support his family back home.
De Zoysa is a Sri Lankan national.
In an interview with a homicide investigator after his arrest, De Zoysa said the Wickramasinghe family he was living with had “been nothing but good to me,” but that he decided to “bash out and kill them because he had run out of money, he didn’t want to go back to Sri Lanka when his international student visa expired, and he “was too goddamn weak” to take his own life.
“I’m tired of all these rules and people and it’s just stupid, like the entire world,” De Zoysa told Ottawa police homicide Sgt. Chris O’Brien.
On March 1, five days before the slayings, he made the decision to do it, Crown attorney Dallas Mack told Superior Court in Ottawa Thursday.
Afterward, his plan was to keep living in the house for a few days until he was arrested.
March 1 was the same day this family photo was taken, at the third birthday celebration for Ranaya Wickramasinghe.
On Jan. 31 that year De Zoysa had ordered a 38-centimetre hunting knife online that he had planned to use to kill himself, he told O’Brien.
Around that time he had stopped showing up to class and completing assignments, was spending a lot of time playing video games and was spending hundreds of dollars on takeout orders, the Crown said.
De Zoysa thought failing grades would cancel his student visa and end the financial support his family was sending from Sri Lanka.
On March 6, 2024, Dhanushka Wickramasinghe was working two jobs: his cleaning business starting at 3:30 a.m. and driving for Uber in chunks throughout the rest of the day.
He took breaks to drop his two eldest children off at school and to eat breakfast with his wife and their two youngest. Later he took another school pickup break and they all stopped for a box of doughnuts on the way home. He dropped them off, and headed back out onto the road.
Later that afternoon, De Zoysa invited the family’s other tenant Amarakoon into his basement bedroom to watch a movie.
In the bedroom he stabbed Amarakoon multiple times, killing him within seconds, or, at most, within “a small number of minutes,” the Crown told court, recapping the findings of a forensic pathologist.
Seven-year-old Inuka heard Amarakoon’s screams from upstairs and told his mother, who was with the baby.
Darshani Ekanayake then called her husband, who was out working. After speaking to his wife, Dhanushka Wickramasinghe called De Zoysa to figure out what was going on.
De Zoysa lied, he told O’Brien in his interview. He told them that the screams had come from the movie he was watching in the basement with Amarakoon, the Crown told court.
After he managed to convince the couple everything was fine, De Zoysa headed upstairs.
On the main level and upper floor of the house, he stabbed all four children and Ekanayake to death. He outlined for police, in detail too graphic to publish here, where and how everything occurred and his actions immediately afterward.
A forensic pathologist found that Ekanayake and the children each died within seconds of being attacked.
At about 5:20 p.m., De Zoysa called Dhanushka Wickramasinghe to ask when he would be home, and he spent the intervening hours waiting for him, he told O’Brien.
“I was just watching TikToks, trying to waste time…. Trying to calm myself down,” he said.
Dhanushka Wickramasinghe arrived home just before 11 p.m. after finishing work and going to the gym, the Crown told court. The lights inside the house were off and he assumed everyone was sleeping.
For about 10 minutes he sat in his car in the garage, using social media to catch up with friends and family. Then he got out and walked inside his home through a door in the garage.
As soon as he walked in he saw De Zoysa, who was standing with the hunting knife hidden behind his back. When Dhanushka Wickramasinghe greeted him, De Zoysa immediately started attacking him, the Crown said.
Again, the details here are graphic, but Dhanushka Wickramasinghe eventually managed to overpower De Zoysa and wrench the hunting knife from his hands, the Crown said.
Dhanushka Wickramasinghe then ran to a neighbouring home for help as De Zoysa chased after him with a chef’s knife from the kitchen.
The neighbours heard Dhanushka Wickramasinghe screaming that someone had killed his children. They called 911, and Dhanushka Wickramasinghe called 911 as well.
Police found De Zoysa sitting on the front steps.
“I was going to be deported, I had no choice. I killed them all,” De Zoysa told the arresting officer.
He repeated that he had killed them after being read his rights to counsel and hearing that anything he said could be used against him.
First responders found all the victims in the home, who by then were beyond help.
Dhanushka Wickramasinghe, meanwhile, “was only concerned for his family” despite his own serious wounds, the Crown said.
“He tried to re-enter the home to get to his wife and children. He asked repeatedly for any information about them,” but police kept him outside to be treated on scene before he was eventually taken to hospital.
He remained in hospital for days, undergoing multiple surgeries.
Survivor reflects on Barrhaven killings, one year later
