A cellphone video recorded by resident Nimao Ali at first shows the man — identified by his family as Abdirahman Abdi, a Somali-Canadian of Ottawa — lying on the sidewalk on his stomach, handcuffed and bleeding, while an officer held him to the ground using a knee.

Then, Abdi stops moving.

"It was devastating to see that he was bleeding, and as I looked at him he actually stopped moving. So I could see he stopped breathing. And it took a long time for the ambulance to come, and it's really sad to see that," Ali, who lives in the same building as Abdi, told CBC News in an interview on Sunday.

"I don't know what to say. It's devastating. We know him, the gentleman. He has a mental illness, a very peaceful guy. I have children in the building and he walks around, he's good with the kids, he's good with all the neighbours, never a problem.

"And all of a sudden, that he's bleeding on the front steps of our building and dying, it was a devastating thing to see."

A shocking update about Abdirahman Abdi, who was severely beaten by Ottawa police yesterday—he is dead. Unbelievably, doctors at The Ottawa Hospital now say he was dead 45 minutes before they were able to assess him. These doctors only told his family he was dead late this afternoon, more than 24 hours after he had been admitted to hospital. They told the family he was on life support. The family was waiting, hoping he might survive.

I cannot begin to express what this all means. All I know is that Ottawa police, and the staff at the Ottawa Hospital, have paid the ultimate disrespect to Abdirahman Abdi and his family. They acted as if his life did not matter. Now is the time to express solidarity with his family, and to demand answers from all those responsible for this unacceptable series of abuses.

Where would this society's apologists and intellectual performing seals be without their favourite word 'complexity?' All the injustices they want to leave in place must be awarded the status of complexity, so as to ensure they are endlessly studied but never challenged. Poverty and homelessness are very 'complex' issues that must be pondered over the generations so as to ensure that 'simplistic solution,' like raising peoples' income, are not hastily applied. The killing of Abdirahman Abdi by Ottawa Police is also very 'complex,' according to Professor Ron Melchers. Actually, I think it was a very simple situation. In a gentrifying area that the developers want 'cleaned up,' a black man with limited English is accosted by cops. He is described by one of his neighbours as 'autistic.' A witness says they told him to lie down and he didn't so he was brought to the ground. Then, “they hit, they hit, they hit, they hit everywhere. Then he was unconscious." The cops focused on trying to confiscate the cell phones of those who'd recorded the incident but offered no assistance to their victim. I'm sure the good professor would think me boorish but I see not a trace of complexity in the beating death of Abdirahman Abdi.

Two days ago, an unarmed, autistic Black man, Abdirahman Abdi, was beaten to death by police, right here in Ottawa, in front of witnesses.

I feel more uncomfortable than perhaps I should in writing this. Several weeks ago Ottawa police officers came to my aid during a violent family situation. They were professional in every respect: prompt, thorough, and restrained in their use of force.

Abdirahman Abdi, on the other hand, was killed after what has been described by witnesses as a savage beating by a number of Ottawa police officers after he had been handcuffed. Medical treatment was delayed. Police attempted, illegally, to seize the cellphones of witnesses who had been filming the assault. (I gather that their owners were having none of that.) [...]

Was the killing racially motivated? That question, in fact all of the community’s anxious questions, are very likely to bounce off the blue wall. How can police be made accountable so that unarmed citizens cannot be beaten to death in front of witnesses with impunity? That’s the biggest question of all, of course—and it, too, may well go unanswered.

Two hundred people attended a vigil to honour the memory of Abdirahman Abdi, the Canadian-Somali man who died in police custody in Ottawa, and shed light on police racial violence north of the border.

“Just here in Montréal-Nord and in St-Michel, you have extremely high rates of police stopping young black persons. You have the police killing of Alain Magloire, another man who was in a mental health crisis who was shot by Montreal police,” social activist Robyn Maynard said.

Maynard is a member of Montréal-Noir — a non-profit collective that aims to end police racial profiling and systemic racism — which, along with the members of Justice for the Victims of Police Killings Coalition, helped organize the vigil that turned into a march.

The event was held at Norman Bethune Square right outside Concordia Univeristy’s downtown campus and started at 6:30 p.m.

The Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations says the way RCMP initially described the shooting death of an unarmed Indigenous man is fuelling racial tensions in Saskatchewan.

Colten Boushie, 22, was a passenger in a car with four other people when he was shot and killed on Aug. 9 on a farm near Biggar, Sask. His family says the group was simply going to ask for help with a flat tire.

RCMP have charged 54-year-old Gerald Stanley, who is from the Biggar area, with second-degree murder.

"The news release the RCMP issued the following day provided just enough prejudicial information for the average reader to draw their own conclusions that the shooting was somehow justified," wrote FSIN Chief Bobby Cameron in a media release.