Friends of slain doctor shocked, saddened by her death
After an Ontario Medical Association council meeting last weekend, Windsor doctor Darren Cargill bumped into a female doctor he hadn’t seen since medical school. The two showed off pictures of their kids and talked about family life before going their separate ways.
Less than a week later Cargill was scrolling through social media when he saw news that the woman he had sat down with just days earlier was dead, her body found in a suitcase near Vaughan, Ont.
“It was nice to catch up and talk about family. She was so full of positivity and optimism,” he said Sunday. “But just a few days later I’m reading that she had died. It was so strange and sad.”
The body of the well-respected physician Elana Fric-Shamji who grew up in Windsor-Essex was discovered Friday after a region-wide search. According to police sources, she was strangled and hit with a blunt object before her body was dumped near Kleinberg, a village about an hour outside of Toronto.
“We received a call from the mother of the victim expressing concern that she hadn’t heard from her daughter in quite some time … a body was discovered in a suitcase not far away,” Toronto police Const. Allyson Douglas-Cook said late Saturday.
Mohammed Shamji, a 40-year-old Toronto neurosurgeon, has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder. He appeared in court Sunday.
Douglas-Cook said an investigation into the homicide is ongoing.
Cargill described Fric-Shamji as “a bright, fun-loving young woman.” After the council meeting he said she revealed she was getting a divorce, but was staying positive.
“She came across as very confident and upbeat,” he said. “Even when she talked about her divorce she was viewing it as a new beginning for her and her children.”
Now, he said, the Fric-Shamji’s three children have been “essentially orphaned.”
Cargill, a palliative care specialist at the Hospice of Windsor, is no stranger to death, but he called what happened to the doctor a “tremendous shock” and tragedy that’s left the Ontario medical community in mourning.
“She was such a bright light, it’s horrible,” he said. “You think about how wonderful of a person she was … to know her life was ended so soon in such a sad way is terrible.”
Mohammed Shamji is pictured in this undated handout photo.
Throughout the weekend friends and family of Fric-Shamji took to social media to express their grief. Many changed their profile pictures to a simple sketch of a female doctor holding a baby next to a purple ribbon in her honour.
Alan Saad said he attended St. Peter Elementary School in Tecumseh and St. Anne Catholic High School with Fric-Shamji long before she became a doctor. He said back in Grade 7 their teacher would grant her a time slot every week where she could stand up and share a story she had written.
“She had a great sense of humour and was a great writer, so she was allowed that special time,” Saad explained. “She had us rolling in the aisles. She was so entertaining and funny.”
During high school the two drifted apart, but Saad said he recently reconnected with her through Facebook where she would often post about long distance running, her husband and how much she loved her kids.
“She was an awesome mother,” he said. “It hurts to see something so terrible happen to such a good person.”
On Friday, Saad said he was scrolling through Facebook when he first learned how she died.
“The first thing I thought about were her kids. I have a 16-month-old girl and I can’t imagine her losing a parent in that way.”
Saad said many friends from the school community are reaching out to each other this weekend to share memories of the doctor and to try and comfort each other.
Among them is Brendan Byrne, who also knew the doctor when she was a student at St. Anne’s. He posted online that he was “heartbroken” by the news.
“She stopped by here a couple years back at our home with her beautiful girls and we had such a great visit,” he wrote on Facebook. “This week has been heart-wrenching and heartbreaking.”
Byrne described Fric-Shamji as “brilliant, witty and lovely” and said he and his family are still reeling in a state of disbelief.
Saad said many graduates from the high school are struggling to come to grips with the doctor’s death.
“Everybody is shocked and saddened. We keep talking about how gifted and full of life she was.”