{"id":265997,"date":"2025-11-06T17:37:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T17:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/265997\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T17:37:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T17:37:08","slug":"man-pleads-guilty-to-2024-stabbing-attack-that-killed-6-inside-ottawa-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/265997\/","title":{"rendered":"Man pleads guilty to 2024 stabbing attack that killed 6 inside Ottawa home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/a\/assets\/texttospeech.svg\" alt=\"Text to Speech Icon\" width=\"44\" height=\"44\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Listen to this article<\/p>\n<p>Estimated 2 minutes<\/p>\n<p>The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n<p>A 20-year-old man has now pleaded guilty to murdering four children, their mother, and a close family friend in a mass stabbing in Ottawa last year.<\/p>\n<p>Febrio De Zoysa has also pleaded guilty to one count of attempted murder for his attack on the father of the family, Dhanushka Wickramasinghe, who was seriously injured.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/ottawa\/ottawa-homicide-barrhaven-berrigan-drive-arrest-1.7136366\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">At the time of the stabbings on March 6, 2024<\/a>, De Zoysa was an international student living with the Wickramasinghes in their basement in Ottawa&#8217;s Barrhaven suburb.<\/p>\n<p>He was arrested at the scene without incident after first responders arrived and was charged with six counts of first-degree murder the following day.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>De Zoysa stood with his lawyer Ewan Lyttle in Superior Court in Ottawa Thursday morning and pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree murder of the following victims:<\/p>\n<p>Ranaya Wickramasinghe, the family&#8217;s three-year-old daughter.Ashwini Wickramasinghe, their four-year-old daughter.Inuka Wickramasinghe, their seven-year-old son.Gamini Amarakoon, 40, a close family friend and one of the family&#8217;s two tenants.<\/p>\n<p>The sentences for those murders are automatic: life in prison with no ability to apply for parole for 25 years.<\/p>\n<p>For the remaining two victims, mother Darshani Ekanayake, 35; and their baby Kelly Wickramasinghe, just two months old, De Zoysa pleaded down to the lesser included offences of second-degree murder. <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"A family of six, with an older man on the right followed by three young daughters, a son and a mother.\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1762450628_465_default.jpg\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1.7777777777777777\" data-cy=\"image-img\"\/>The Wickramasinghe family at daughter Ranaya&#8217;s third birthday party the same month as the killings. From left: father Dhanushka Wickramasinghe; two-month-old daughter Kelly; daughters Ashwini, 4, and Ranaya, 3; son Inuka, 7; and mother Darshani Dilanthika Ekanayake, 35. (Facebook)<\/p>\n<p>Pleading down is commonplace in plea bargains.<\/p>\n<p>Those sentences will be partly automatic: second-degree murders result in life sentences as well, but the periods of parole ineligibilty will be up to Justice Kevin Phillips to decide after input from the Crown and defence.<\/p>\n<p>The shocking incident \u2014 described by Ottawa&#8217;s mayor as one of the most shocking acts of violence the capital has ever seen \u2014 generated headlines across Canada <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/ottawa\/as-rumours-swirl-barrhaven-killings-grip-sri-lankan-media-1.7141723\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">and gripped Sri Lankan media<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>The Wickramasinghes were newcomers to Canada from Sri Lanka (except for the baby) and so was Amarakoon, who was working to support his family back home.<\/p>\n<p>De Zoysa is a Sri Lankan national.  <\/p>\n<p>The court is now expected to hear what happened that night in Barrhaven and the events that led up to it, as well as any victim impact statements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 2 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-265997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}