Ruminations

Living Rough, Exposed and Vulnerable

"He was left for dead in the alley."
"Ostamas attacked and murdered Bushie within the parkade and left him for dead."
"I wouldn't say they were friends. There is no motive that I'm aware of."
"Investigators have learned that John Paul Ostamas is very transient. We know that he is originally from the Thunder Bay area. We also know that he has spent time in Winnipeg on and off for the past 10 years."
"Our investigators will be contacting police in other jurisdictions where Ostamas is known to have travelled."
Superintendent Danny Smyth, Winnipeg Police Service

"This person [serial killer] was also a part of this community [the homeless] so, at one point, he was involved with the community. He was friends with people."
"Everybody is really surprised and kind of heart-broken right now."
Mark Stewart, residential manager, Salvation Army, Winnipeg

"The reality is, they're prepared for this [potential violence] every day [the homeless]."
"It is a different way of life when you don't have the security that you and I do."
Lisa Goss, executive director, The Main Street Project shelter, Winnipeg

"He [Stony Bushie] was always a happy kind of guy, always joking around. He would come out [to Winnipeg] and hang out with his friends and then go home."
"He just wanted to see his friends again."
Chief Martin Owens, Little Grand Rapids First Nation reserve

Stony Bushie, an aboriginal Canadian, lived on the First Nation reserve northeast of Winnipeg during the winter. He would travel to Winnipeg and there live on the street, or use the resources of a shelter during the summer months. And he had made many friends and acquaIntances among the homeless population. Among them was a man by the name of John Paul Ostamas, originally from Thunder Bay, Ontario. And this is the man who has been accused of two counts of first-degree murder.

Over the week-end just past two homeless men within a short distance of one another in an area where the homeless are known to gather were found beaten to death. It was assumed that the same man had killed the two homeless men. A closed circuit video had caught the image of someone whom local police were suspicious of. And police released to the public scrutiny security footage of a "person of interest" in the deaths of the two homeless men.

Aside from Stony Bushie, 48, Donald Collins, 65, was also beaten to death by John Paul Ostamas hours apart, the same night. And he is as well, now, a suspect in the murder of a third man, Myles Monias, 37, who had been assaulted brutally enough to cause his death, earlier this month in a bus shelter. When Ostamas was arrested it was for a totally unrelated charge of assault. Undergoing questioning, it became apparent that he was the man police were looking for.

He has a record that goes back many years, of multiple assaults in the area of Thunder Bay. And there was an arrest on his record as well for domestic battery. Winnipeg detectives are now actively working with investigators in other jurisdictions where he is known to have been, on suspicion that the man could be considered a suspect in other, unsolved crimes. Being homeless, living on the streets, is undeniably risky business.

"The least among us are entitled to the same protection as the best", Justice Gregory Warner said from a courtroom in Nova Scotia, delivering a life sentence to two men who had set a homeless man on fire, and watched him burn to death, at the opposite end of the country, in Berwick, northwest of Halifax. There, 62-year-old Harley Lawrence had sought refuge in a bus shelter in the February winter cold two years ago.

And there he was discovered, a homeless man, ripe for the amusement of 27-year-old Daniel Wayne Surette, and 26-year-old Kyle David James Fredericks, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. In the winter of 2013 they set the homeless man on fire and watched as he died an agonizing death. "It's hard to imagine somebody so animalistic they would pour gas over somebody and watch it", the judge commented.

Kyle David Fredericks arrives at provincial court in Kentville, Nova Scotia on February 9, 2015. Photo Andrew Vaughn, The Canadian Press

Kyle David James Fredericks arrives at provincial court in Kentville, N.S., on Feb. 9, 2015. Two Nova Scotia men have pleaded guilty to second-degree murder after they poured gas on a homeless man and set him on fire. Daniel Wayne Surette and Kyle David James Fredericks were charged in April 2014 with first-degree murder in Harley Lawrence's death. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

- See more at: http://www.squamishchief.com/two-nova-scotia-men-who-set-homeless-man-on-fire-plead-guilty-to-murder-1.1771401#sthash.BMpAX3nR.dpuf