Local Somalis rattled 1 month after fatal wedding shooting

When someone yelled "Gunshots!" in the middle of celebrations for the newly-married bride and groom, Fowsia Hussein had a difficult choice to make. 

Should she duck under her table? Run and save herself? Or should she join her 16-year-old daughter in the women's washroom?

She didn't know where the bullets were coming from. 

"I made the decision to go and find my child," she said. 

Hussein, a member of Ottawa's Somali community, was one of more than 200 people at the Sept. 2 reception at the Infinity Convention Centre south of Ottawa's core.

She and her daughter ended up not being among the eight people wounded amid a hail of bullets fired outside the convention centre that night.

Two of those victims, both from the Toronto area, died: 26-year-old Said Mohamed Ali and 29-year-old Abdishakur Abdi-Dahir.

Hussein and her daughter huddled in a bathroom stall for 45 minutes. At one point someone wounded walked in —  she didn't know if they were a victim or the shooter.

Eventually they emerged, walking past the parts of the bathroom floor that were sticky with blood, and escaped to the parking lot.

One month later, Hussein said she remains scared of attending large events.

"The suspects are not caught yet. We don't know who [was] the target," she said. "We have very limited information to reassure us." 

Hussein is one of a number of local Somali residents who told CBC that last month's shooting has cast a traumatizing shadow over the community and that they're concerned about the pace of the Ottawa Police Service investigation.

While they're relieved officers responded quickly to the scene — from which the suspected shooter fled — they say they're disappointed with the police response in the weeks since. 

"I don't think the police [are] saying what they know, and maybe rightfully so to protect their investigation. I give them the benefit of the doubt," Hussein said.