‘You Are the Stuff of Nightmares’: Man Jailed for Life Over ‘Monstrous’ Killing of Canadian Family

A 20-year-old Sri Lankan student who brutally murdered six people — including a mother and her four young children — in one of Canada’s worst mass killings has been sentenced to life in prison.

Febrio De-Zoysa, who lived with the Wickramasinghe family in Ottawa, fatally stabbed Darshani Ekanayake, 35, her children — Inuka, 7, Ashwini, 4, Ranaya, 3, and baby Kelly, just two months old — and a family friend, Gamini Amarakoon, 40, during a frenzied attack in March 2024.

Delivering a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years, Justice Kevin Phillips condemned De-Zoysa’s crimes as “stupefying, monstrous and inhuman.”

“You are the stuff of nightmares,” the judge said. “You have caused so much loss and grief that words fail to measure it.”

At the time of the killings, De-Zoysa was a student renting a basement room in the family’s townhouse in Ottawa’s Barrhaven neighbourhood.

In court, he repeated what he had told investigators earlier — that the family had been “good and kind” to him but that he had been “unwell” at the time.

His defence lawyer, Ewan Lyttle, admitted the murders were “unthinkable,” but argued that his client had been struggling with severe mental health issues.

Canadian broadcaster CBC reported that De-Zoysa sat emotionless through most of the hearing before apologising to the victims’ families.

“I will spend the rest of my life acknowledging the truth of what I did,” he said quietly.

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According to court documents, De-Zoysa had purchased a 38cm hunting knife weeks before the attack — originally intending to use it to take his own life. Instead, on 6 March 2024, he turned it on the family that had taken him in.

His first victim was Amarakoon, whom he lured to the basement under the pretext of watching a movie. After killing him, De-Zoysa lied to Ekanayake — who had heard the screams — telling her the noise was “from the film.” Moments later, he stormed upstairs and slaughtered the mother and her four children.

When Dhanushka Wickramasinghe, the father, returned home hours later, he was attacked but managed to fight off De-Zoysa. Neighbours called police after hearing his cries for help.

Officers arrived to find De-Zoysa sitting on the steps outside. “I was going to be deported. I had no choice. I killed them all,” he reportedly told one officer.

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Families Torn Apart

The victims, all of Sri Lankan origin, had moved to Canada seeking a better life. During sentencing, Amarakoon’s widow, speaking from Sri Lanka, said her husband had “given everything — his time, his energy, his dreams.”

Their teenage daughter told the court: “Nothing feels normal anymore.”

A grief-stricken Wickramasinghe, the only surviving family member, described his world as “destroyed beyond repair.”

“Please do not destroy the peace and quiet of this land. Let us protect and respect it,” he said.

Ottawa’s mayor called the tragedy “one of the most shocking acts of violence” in the city’s history.