A Good Samaritan who was stabbed to death while trying to break up a brawl was remembered by a family member as a golden student, and full of potential.
Abdul Hannan, 26, was killed early Sunday morning at the corner of Jeanne Mance and Cremazie Blvd. West. after breaking up a fight following a celebration for Pakistan's independence day.
"I called him before he died, at like 12:30. It happened I think at 1:30," said Mohammed Zahir, a family relative and Hannan's first contact when he arrived in Montreal.
I thought maybe he'd left and was sleeping because they were tired... I didn't know what happened," he said.
Hannan was a foreign student from Lahore, Pakistan, who had been in Montreal for six years. He had been married for two years to a woman named Maria Kanaris. The couple lived together in St. Laurent.
Hannan received his landed immigrant status two weeks before his death and was set to write his actuariial exam on Aug. 25 in hopes of finding full-time work with an insurance company.
Described as devastated by the loss, Hannan's parents are awaiting his body, which is returning to Lahore on a 5 p.m. flight from Trudeau airport, a relative in Montreal said.
Brawl on St. Laurent Blvd.
Hannan had been celebrating Pakistan's independence day at Lucien Page school on St. Laurent Blvd. Saturday night. In the early hours on Sunday morning, he saw several men from the party in a brawl.
Hannan stepped in to break up the fight, and was stabbed in the neck, said Montreal police Sgt. Ian Lafreniere. He died of his wounds in hospital.
Another man was injured in the leg, and police located three other men with stab wounds who had fled the scene.
A sixth man, 36 years old, was arrested at the scene, but was too drunk to speak with police.
Charges laid
One man was charged Monday from hospital with second-degree murder in Hannan's death.
A second man was expected to appear in court Tuesday to be arraigned on charges of aggravated assault and assault with a weapon.
