Ottawa police have charged a man in connection to a fatal stabbing of a woman earlier this week in what they are calling a case of femicide.
Police said they were called to Heney Street in Lowertown on April 1 at around 4:30 p.m., where officers found the victim, 51-year-old Renee Descary, suffering from stab wounds.
She later died from her injuries, police said, adding the homicide has “been determined to be a femicide.”
Oliver Denia, 24, has been charged with second-degree murder.
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Ottawa Police tells Global News the victim and the suspect were unknown to each other and “they were strangers.”
The Ottawa Police Service is widely considered the first police force in the country to start using the term “femicide” in its policing after officially naming its first case with the term in August 2024.
Following consultation between their departments and community groups, the force felt it was crucial to use the term, despite its absence from the Criminal Code, according to Deputy Chief Trish Ferguson.
“It draws attention to the issue,” Ferguson previously told Global News. “Femicide is … often driven by stereotypes, gender roles, discrimination towards women and girls or unequal power relationships between women and men.”
Since deciding to use the term, Ottawa police have already labelled a few cases as femicide.
A spokesperson for Ottawa Police said it “defines femicide as the killing of any woman at the hands of a man.”
This is Ottawa’s seventh homicide of 2025.
— With files from Sawyer Bogdan
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