{"id":420231,"date":"2026-01-19T23:34:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T23:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/420231\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T23:34:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T23:34:13","slug":"canada-approves-permanent-residency-for-family-of-ottawa-mass-murder-victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/420231\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada approves permanent residency for family of Ottawa mass murder victims"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canada has approved permanent residency status for the Sri Lankan brother and father of an Ottawa man whose wife and four children were killed in a gruesome mass stabbing.<\/p>\n

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Darshani Ekanayake, 35, her seven-year-old son Inuka and her three daughters, Ashwini, 4, Ranaya, 3, and Kelly, two months, were killed at their Ottawa townhouse in March 2024.<\/a><\/p>\n

Gamini Amarakoon, 40, a family friend and tenant of the family, was also killed.<\/p>\n

Dhanushka Wickramasinghe, Ekanayake\u2019s husband and the children\u2019s father, was injured in the attack but survived.<\/a><\/p>\n

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In November, Febrio De-Zoysa was sentenced to life in prison<\/a> with no chance of parole for 25 years, after pleading guilty to four counts of first degree murder, two counts of second degree murder and one count of attempted murder.<\/p>\n

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Wickramasinghe\u2019s brother and father came to Canada after the murders to support him and last year asked the federal government for help<\/a> after applying for permanent residency but hearing nothing for months.<\/p>\n

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Immigration lawyer Ronalee Carey, who is representing the family, said Monday both the brother and father had their applications approved earlier this month and are now just waiting for their cards to arrive.<\/p>\n

Carey says Wickramasinghe\u2019s brother, Chelaka Wickramasinghe, is now planning to sponsor his wife and daughter, who previously were denied visitor visas that would allow them to travel to Canada. She says processing time for that is 14 months.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, this is not ideal as the family has been separated for so long already,\u201d Carey says.<\/p>\n

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Carey says she had requested that Canada\u2019s immigration minister reconsider the denials of the visitor visas but didn\u2019t receive a response.<\/p>\n

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She says she\u2019s still collecting documents from the previous visitor visa application and will make further attempts to try and ensure it\u2019s successful.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince processing times are so long for the sponsorship application, we would like them to come as visitors for now,\u201d Carey says.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis wife can apply for a work permit once she is in Canada, though processing times are so long that she\u2019ll be waiting a long time for it to be approved,\u201d Carey said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIRCC could expedite processing of her work permit by issuing it in conjunction with a temporary resident permit, if they so choose.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t&copy 2026 The Canadian Press\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canada has approved permanent residency status for the Sri Lankan brother and father of an Ottawa man whose…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[176168,49,48,2169,6680,22175,44,7098],"class_list":{"0":"post-420231","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-barrhaven-homicide","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-crime","12":"tag-immigration","13":"tag-mass-stabbing","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-sri-lanka"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420231","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=420231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}