The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team has announced that the stabbing death of a Coquitlam realtor was an isolated incident and there is no further risk to public safety, but police still won’t say why they are so certain. Thirty-two-year-old Ramina Shah was killed in an underground parkade as she left her Austin Avenue office Thursday afternoon. “We did receive some background information from other witnesses, people that know her, and that information in combination with things we have seen at scene lead us to believe this is an isolated incident and not random,” IHIT spokesperson Sgt. David Lee said. On Saturday, investigators could be seen canvassing local businesses in a quest for video footage in the Austin Heights neighbourhood. According to SFU criminology professor Rob Gordon, the fact that police seem so certain about the stabbing being an isolated incident likely means they already have a very good idea of the motive behind the attack — and possibly even the person, or people, involved. “That’s what that’s signalling. They already have somebody lined up for this and there is no need for the community at large to be overly concerned,” Gordon said in a Zoom interview with CTV News. According to her social media posts, Shah was a single mother of three young children, all under the age of six. Police do not believe she had any connections to organized crime. “The victim, Ramina Shah, has no ties to the ongoing gang conflict,” said Lee. “It’s not related to that and there’s no ties to criminal activity.” As the investigation continues, someone has placed a bouquet of roses and a single candle in the parkade as a small memorial to a life cut violently short.
