At Family's Request, Police Release Horrific Details of Young Calgary Woman's Murder

Police in Calgary have released information about how 22-year-old Nadia El-Dib was murdered by her ex-boyfriend on March 25. The info is being released at the request of her family, as the case is considered closed, CBC reports.

"Based on all the evidence we have, we are totally confident that Mr. Bettahar is responsible for Nadia's murder," said Staff Sergeant Colin Chisholm of the Calgary police homicide unit on Wednesday.

Adam Bettahar, 21, El-Dib’s ex, stabbed her over 40 times, slit her throat, and shot her twice after they left a downtown Calgary shisha bar together at 3 AM.

Reportedly, El-Dib reached out to a friend over the phone when Bettahar wouldn’t take her back to her car about an hour after they left the shisha bar. El-Dib and Bettahar dated in late 2017 but were no longer together.

About 15 minutes after refusing to take her back to her car, police say, Bettahar drove, then parked behind a house in a residential area where he stabbed El-Dib over and over, and cut her throat. Somehow, despite her wounds, she was able to escape out of the car.

But Bettahar followed her and then shot her. She fell on the ground in a backyard, and he shot her yet again. Bettahar used a gun he had purchased legally several weeks before for the attack—a semi-automatic rifle.

Police were not called to the scene where they found El-Dib’s body until five hours later at 9:30 AM, despite witnesses later reporting that they heard gunshots.

Bettahar went on the run following the murder and died in a shootout near Edmonton with RCMP four days after El-Dib’s death.

El-Dib’s murder is considered a case of domestic violence even though the couple had already split up. Calgary Police Service is reporting an alarming rate of domestic violence calls per year—over 18,500 just in 2017, an increase of six percent over the five-year average. That means there was an average of over 50 domestic violence calls per day for 2017.

Racha El-Dib, the victim’s sister, called her sister’s ex "a disturbed young man, who believed he had the right to murder her because she exercised her right of taking ownership of her life, body, and soul, by saying no to a man who was persistent on being with her.”

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