Woman found stabbed to death after seemingly random attack in Laval
A 46-year-old woman was stabbed to death in a wooded park in Laval, Que., on Wednesday evening, and the victim's son says the attack was random.
Laval police said they received a 911 call around 7:35 p.m. on Wednesday reporting that a woman had been seriously injured in Armand-Frappier Park near the corner of Murray Avenue and 8th Street.
When they arrived, officers found 46-year-old Irina Draghicescu Iankulov suffering from multiple stab wounds to the upper body.
First responders provided aid but she was declared dead at the scene.
Police arrested 20-year-old Konstantinos Tsargoulis, who was seen fleeing the area Wednesday evening.
Tsargoulis appeared in a Laval courtroom on Thursday and was charged with first-degree murder.
The victim's son, Robert Draghicescu, said the news of his mother's death shook him, his sister and his father to their core. His mother liked to go for walks in the woods, he said, but this time, she appeared to have "taken a wrong turn."
The attack appeared to be random, Draghicescu said.
"My mother is dead. She's the victim. Now us, the family, we have to learn to live with this," he said.
"We have no words to describe what we're going through. There are no words in the dictionary that can describe what we're feeling."
Draghicescu said he hoped the perpetrator would be punished as quickly as possible.
He described his mother as a hard worker who strove to care for her children and made sacrifices for their well-being.
'Everybody was screaming'
The suspect was seen running into Ayad Mohamed's backyard.
"The kids, everybody was screaming," as the suspect tried to jump over Mohamed's backyard door, he said.
Mohamed said he briefly grabbed the suspect, but couldn't hold on.
"He disappeared. But I saw the police, and I told them what happened," Mohamed said.
Mohamed said minutes later several police officers arrived and about 20 minutes after that, they caught the suspect.
Despite describing the incident as "crazy," Mohamed said it felt only logical to try to stop him.
"If every person let the bad things go and nothing happened, where would we live anymore?" Mohamed said. "We have to react."
The major crimes unit is leading the investigation.
