CONTENT WARNING BELOW: anti-Black, ableist violence by police

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The Icarus Project Ottawa, local radical mental health

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Notice of memorial in Ottawa Citizen

Previous coverage from Citizen (also check CBC, etc)

Abdirahman Abdi, a 37-year old autistic Black man originally from Somalia, was beaten to death by a group of police officers according to witnesses outside of his apartment building on Sunday morning, after a chase from the Bridgehead coffeeshop where a call to police had been made about his conduct. He was unarmed, and the beating continued even after police had handcuffed him. The ambulance took somewhere between 10-30min to arrive while he was lying unconscious in his own blood, and although media have been reporting he died in hosptial on Monday, the family confirmed that the hospital told them Monday afternoon that he had actually been dead for 45min before arriving at the hospital on Sunday. Ontario's Special Investigations Unit (SIU) is investigating the incident.

Crowd-funding for funeral expenses:

Stay up to date by following #JusticeforAbdirahman on Twitter:

And local #BlackLivesMatter facebook pages/groups:

Note this article (from the United States)

"People with mental illness 16 times more likely to be killed by police"

And this afternoon (Tuesday) sometime between 3-6pm, CBC Ottawa's All In A Day radio show on 91.5FM will be featuring perspectives on police interactions with disabled people. The segment may be posted afterwards here: