Life-saving bylaw officer shrugs off hero label

 By Tony LOFARO, Ottawa Citizen November 5, 2012

Ottawa Bylaw Officer Abdulkadar Mohamed Dualeh was among eight individuals and programs given a Community Safety Award from Crime Prevention Ottawa on Monday night.  Photograph by: Michael Anderson

OTTAWA — Abdulkadar Mohamed “Mo” Dualeh doesn’t consider himself a hero.

Yet, most people would certainly think so, especially after they learn he saved a child left alone freezing outside, helped a man who was being beaten by another man with a metal bar, and stopped a desperate woman from throwing herself in front of oncoming cars on the Queensway. And within the past two years.

“If heroes are to be mentioned, they are the soldiers who leave the comfort zone of Canada and go to Afghanistan to save a nine-year-old boy for example, who wants to go to school even though people are preventing him. Those are the heroes,” said Dualeh, 38, an Ottawa parking bylaw officer.
“What I did anybody will do it.”

On Monday night, Dualeh was given a Community Safety Award from Crime Prevention Ottawa. He was among eight individuals and programs honoured at Ottawa City Hall.

“I am very humbled receiving this award,” said Dualeh prior to the awards ceremony.

Born in Somalia, Dualeh came to Canada at the age of 13 as a refugee. He has found peace and tranquility in his adopted country, and in addition to working as a parking bylaw officer since 2001, he also volunteers at the Ottawa Somaliland Community Services on Belfast Road. He hopes to become a police officer one day.

“I feel that I owe a lot to this country, and I need to give it back. This country is known for its compassion and helping people all over the world,” said Dualeh, the father of boys, aged nine and 11.
In January 2010 Dualeh was in the south end of the city when he found a three-year-old girl outside in the cold. She had wandered away from her home.

“Being a father myself I jumped over the snowbank and grabbed the kid. She was terrified,” said Dualeh, who waited for ambulance and police to arrive.

In April 2012, while off-duty and driving on the Queensway near the Vanier Parkway, he saw a woman at the off-ramp attempting to throw herself in front of vehicles. No motorists stopped, but Dualeh did and held the woman until the OPP arrived.

“She was waiting for a car and whenever a car got near her she was trying to get hit, but nobody wanted to hit her,” he said.

In May, he scared off a man from pummelling another man to death on Besserer Street, near Rideau Street. The victim was being robbed of his iPhone.

“I saw this man screaming and this other man is beating him, and 10 or 15 people are just watching. To me it’s one of those things that you can’t drive by and let it happen,” he said.

This summer he also chased after a man who had stolen jars of money from a Lebanese festival on Donald Street. He finally cornered the man in a driveway, aided by other men from the festival.