OTTAWA, Ontario — He seemed lost, “didn’t fit in” and went more than five years without seeing his mother. Lately, he had been staying in a homeless shelter, where the recent convert to Islam talked about wanting to go to Libya to get away from drugs but griped that he couldn’t get a passport.
A picture began to emerge Thursday of Michael Zehaf-Bibeau a day after the 32-year-old Canadian launched a deadly attack on Canada’s seat of government that forced the country to confront the danger of radicalized citizens in its midst.
In what the prime minister called a terrorist attack, Zehaf-Bibeau — a petty criminal with a long rap sheet, including a string of drug offenses — shot a soldier to death at Canada’s tomb of the unknown Wednesday, then stormed the Parliament building, where he was gunned down by the sergeant-at-arms.
Abubakir Abdelkareem, 29, who often visited the Ottawa Mission, a homeless shelter downtown, said he met Zehaf-Bibeau there. He said Zehaf-Bibeau told him he had a drug problem in Vancouver but had been clean for three months and was trying to steer clear of temptation.
Abdelkareem said Zehaf-Bibeau wanted his passport to fly to Libya because he thought he could avoid drugs there.
But in the past three days, “his personality changed completely,” Abdelkareem said. “He was not talkative; he was not social” anymore and slept during the day, said Abdelkareem, who concluded the man was back on drugs.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police on Thursday confirmed that Zehaf-Bibeau — whose father was from Libya and whose mother was Canadian — had applied recently for a passport. RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson said authorities learned from his mother after the attack that he wanted to travel to Syria.
After initially reporting that two or three assailants might have taken part in the shooting rampage, Canadian police said Thursday that Zehaf-Bibeau was the lone gunman.
Meanwhile, Kevin Vickers, the 58-year-old Parliament sergeant-at-arms who shot and killed Zehaf-Bibeau, got a rousing standing ovation in the House of Commons for saving lawmakers’ lives.
Vickers, dressed in his ceremonial robe and carrying his heavy mace, acknowledged the applause by nodding solemnly.
The former Mountie said in a statement that he was “very touched” by the attention but that he has the close support of a remarkable security team.
