Instead of making cards and trinkets for Mother’s Day this weekend, Elana Fric-Shamji’s children can only lay flowers at her grave. It will be a painful day for her two daughters and young son, who still cannot bear to hear her name, their grandmother told a Toronto courtroom Wednesday.
Ana Fric was among the family, friends and colleagues of the beloved family doctor who read out victim impact statements in court, detailing the suffering they have endured since the 40 year old was killed by her husband, physician Mohammed Shamji, on Nov. 30, 2016.
“For two and a half years, we have had to not only deal with our own horrific loss but also the children’s even more horrific loss,” said Ms. Fric, who is now raising her grandchildren, who are 14, 11 and 5. “He has destroyed all of our lives forever. The children still cannot bear to have their mother mentioned because it is so painful to them.”
The youngest, she fears, will not remember her at all.
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“His family, including myself, will make sure he knows and will fully appreciate all his mom did for him and how much she adored him,” said Dr. Fric-Shamji’s sister, Caroline Lekic. And when the time comes, she told Dr. Shamji directly, “he will be informed about you – and what kind of husband you were to his mother.”
Two days after Dr. Fric-Shamji filed for divorce, her husband beat and choked her to death in their bedroom. He stuffed her body into a suitcase and dumped it in a river 35 kilometres north of the city. Afterward, he carried on as though nothing had happened, explaining away her absence, then pleading ignorance when it was evident she had disappeared.
Ms. Fric and her husband, Joseph, spoke tearfully Wednesday about how proud they were of their hard-working daughter and how they took on double shifts at their auto plant in Windsor, Ont., to help pay for her medical school tuition.
It was during her residency in Ottawa that she met Dr. Shamji, a neurosurgeon.
“She was so full of hope in those early days, looking forward to an exciting career and an exciting life,” her mother remembered. "But it was not to be.”
From a distance, the pair appeared to live an enviable life. They held multiple prestigious degrees and led ambitious professional and personal lives, running marathons and travelling to conferences around the world. But behind the rosy appearances they kept up on social media, their 12-year marriage had been “volatile and dysfunctional,” rife with escalating verbal, emotional and physical abuse.
On the eve of his trial last month, Dr. Shamji pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, which carries a mandatory sentence of 25 years in prison. At his sentencing hearing Wednesday, the Crown and defence jointly submitted that he should be eligible for parole after 14 years. Justice John McMahon is expected to deliver his sentence Thursday morning.
The plea means Dr. Fric-Shamji’s oldest daughter – a key witness – has been spared from testifying about the night of the murder. Then 11 years old, she awoke to banging and then her mother’s scream coming from the bedroom. Then silence. When she went into the room to investigate, her father ordered her back to bed. When morning came, her mother was gone.
In their victim impact statements, friends and colleagues expressed guilt and regret that they hadn’t detected signs of danger – and hadn’t reached out when they knew there was trouble in the marriage.
“It breaks my heart that I didn’t do anything,” said Matthew Mountain, a friend of the couple. “I thought of myself as a good judge of character, when clearly I wasn’t.”
Another friend, Lisa Salamon, spoke about the “punch in the gut” she felt when she learned of her friend’s murder. Dr. Fric-Shamji, she told the court, was gregarious, gorgeous and witty. She was a woman colleagues looked up to and friends confided in.
The two women were together the weekend before the murder, at an Ontario Medical Association conference in Toronto. Dr. Fric-Shamji, her friend recalled, had decided to finally leave her husband.
“How happy she was,” Dr. Salamon remembered, “how certain she seemed of a better future for herself and her children, knowing that she was taking the necessary steps to leave her abusive marriage.”
This murder, she said, has been a jolting reality check for their small medical community. “So today we honour Elana with a legacy to take care of each other, in a way that we were unable and unaware of, to take care of her when she needed us.”
Letters of support were also submitted to the court by relatives and colleagues of Dr. Shamji. His parents expressed shame and remorse for their son’s actions. They wrote that they pray his time in prison “yields rehabilitation and healing."
Patients, too, wrote letters praising his good work. One noted the “palpable void” his absence has left in the province’s medical system.
During his own brief address to the court, Dr. Shamji turned to his two daughters, sitting in the front row. “I’ve devastated your lives. … I can only say I’m sorry,” he said to them. “I hope that the memories of your mother will help you to be brave and supportive of each other as you navigate the terrible circumstances that I have created for you.”
Reflecting back on that night, he said, “I should have killed myself and not Elana.”
“You should’ve,” Ms. Lekic muttered.
Outside court, she dismissed his apology.
“He’s only sad because he got caught,” she said. “He’s not sad for my sister, he’s not sad at all.”