MONTREAL – The husband of the 32-year-old woman shot to death in the garage of her Laval home Sunday morning has committed numerous criminal offences, including drug trafficking and uttering death threats, and since 2006 has been fighting deportation orders.
Police have refused to release the name of the husband or the wife, but land registry records show that the home where the slaying took place is in the name of Lida Phon and her husband, Ziad Ziade, a Lebanese national, also 32.
Police said they don’t know exactly when the woman was killed, only that the victim’s husband called 911 about 10:25 a.m. Sunday after making the grisly discovery. No one else was in the home at the time.
“The husband said he didn’t hear anything, and there were no witnesses or anybody who heard anything,” Laval police Constable Nathalie Lorrain said. “We think a gun with a silencer was used.”
Paramedics rushed to the house on Brunel St. in Laval’s Chomedey district, but their efforts were in vain. The woman had reportedly been dead for hours, according to Urgences Santé. She had been shot multiple times.
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“She was coming home during the night, and after she drove the car into the garage, she was shot several times,” Lorrain said. “There were at least 10 shots fired at the car.”
According to a 2007 Federal Court judgment on Ziade’s appeal of a deportation order, he arrived in Canada from the Ivory Coast with his family in 1992 when he was 12 years old.
He married Phon on Dec. 15, 2006, after living with her since 2000 and after he began contesting a deportation order.
His problems with immigration authorities began after he was convicted of committing a “multitude of offences,” authorities said.
These included a conviction in 2000 for producing 41 marijuana plants and trafficking in crack cocaine. Ziade was sentenced to one year in prison for the marijuana and 23 months for the crack. He was also convicted of uttering death threats.
Soon after his convictions, he was ordered deported, but in 2002 the Immigration Appeal Division granted him a stay of removal on “humanitarian and compassionate grounds.”
Lorraine said Ziade was recently seen consorting with criminal gang members.
The couple have a child, but the child was not at home when the woman was killed.
Phon had attended a birthday party with a member of her family the evening before she was killed.
Lorrain said the woman often stayed the night with family members. So Ziade was not surprised when he did not see her return home that evening, she said.
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