Toronto doctor, Mohammed Shamji sentenced to life with eligibility of parole after 14 years in the murder of physician wife, Elana Fric-Shamji. Marriage marred by domestic violence.
A Toronto neurosurgeon who pleaded guilty to the 2016 killing of his physician wife has was on Thursday sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 14 years.
Mohammed Shamji, 43, entered a guilty plea to the second-degree murder of Elana Fric-Shamji, 40, at a Toronto, Canada, courthouse in April.
Justice John McMahon in sentencing the father of three said the case was yet another tragic instance of domestic homicide that he sees far too often CTV News reported.
Of note, studies reveal of all the violent crime committed in Canada, upwards of 30% is committed by an intimate partner. According to the Canadian Woman’s Foundation– a woman is killed by her partner every six days.
The court was told Mohammed Shamji broke his wife’s neck and ribs and choked her to death as their children slept nearby.
McMahon credited the defendant for his last-minute guilty plea, which saved his young daughter from testifying. But he condemned him for the brutal murder.
Despite the life sentencing, Ana Fric, Elana’s mother, said justice wasn’t done.
‘I’m so sorry we don’t have the death penalty in this country because Mohammed Shamji deserves death for what he did,’ she said.
A statement read out in court said Shamji killed his wife, then 40, during an argument. The woman had filed for divorce two days earlier.
Fric-Shamji claimed she had been a victim of domestic violence during their 12-year marriage.
Ana Fric says she she first met Mohammed Shamji was distant and aloof. She says she wanted Elana to go to police after reports of abuse and begged her to leave him and lay criminal charges. Elana did leave for awhile pic.twitter.com/tOHbQIpBnE
— Catherine McDonald (@cmcdonaldglobal) May 9, 2019
Mohammed Shamji wife’s body barely recognizable after all her hair was cut off and face badly swollen:
The neurosurgeon, who has been in custody since his arrest on December 2, 2016, following strangling his physician wife- stuffed Elana’s body into a suitcase where it was discovered dumped the next day by a passer-by near the Humber River in the southern Ontario city of Vaughan.
She was killed from strangulation and blunt force trauma, according to police.
Shamji was arrested at a coffee shop in Mississauga a day after her body was found.
The wife was barely recognizable with all her hair cut off and her face obsequiously swollen.
Speaking outside the courthouse after his guilty plea, Ana Fric, Elana’s mother, said: ‘Justice will never befall us. The only justice we will ever have is if she will come back — and she will never come back.’
‘Hatred, I hate him’: The daughters of convicted killer Mohammed Shamji describe their confusion and heartache since the death of their mother https://t.co/CK5Y2FdMyn pic.twitter.com/2XXMwETTsS
— CTV Toronto (@CTVToronto) May 9, 2019
Behind the happy social media facade of Mohammed Shamji and Elana Fric-Shamji’s marriage:
News of the murder and Shamji’s complicity was met with shock in the Toronto area at the time, particularly within the medical community.
The Shamjis were highly regarded doctors whose marriage produced three children.
Fric-Shamji worked as a family doctor at the Scarborough and Rouge Hospital in Toronto.
Before his arrest, Shamji was a neurosurgeon at Toronto Western Hospital and a faculty member at the University of Toronto.
They both had advanced degrees from Duke University in the US.
Witnesses reported hearing the couple arguing at their home on the night of the killing.
Law enforcement officials alleged that Fric-Shamji was hit with a blunt force object in the couple’s garage.
Neighbors told the Toronto Sun that Elana Fric-Shamji had filed for divorce from her husband and that she was in ‘good spirits’ in the days leading up to her death because she was ‘looking toward her new life’.
At the time of the killing, the couple’s children – Yasmin, 12; Faiza, nine; and Marius, three – were placed in the care of her maternal grandparents.
Fric-Shamji’s death was a far cry from images the couple presented on their social media accounts, which show a husband and wife enjoying one another’s company.
Behind the facade, sources told the Toronto Sun in 2016 that the marriage was marred by previous incidents in which the police were called to the house.
‘If I ever go missing, or if something ever happens to me, you will know who did it,’ Dr. Elana Fric-Shamji confided to a friend amid escalating physical and emotional abuse as she considered divorcing her husband, Dr. Mohammed Shamji
‘It’s very shocking,’ a friend told the Sun. ‘She was just a wonderful, wonderful person.’
