Man Charged With First-Degree Murder in Death of Montreal Woman Killed During Virtual Meeting

File photo: the Montreal skyline from Mont Royal (Taxiarchos228 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0).

On September 22, Leila Ben Salem logged into a virtual meeting from her Montreal apartment, like millions of Canadians do every workday. She never logged off. When police arrived for a wellness check that afternoon, they found her dead.

Nearly a month later, that death has a charge attached to it. Youcef Moussaoui, 33, was arrested Thursday afternoon and formally charged Friday with first-degree murder in connection with Ben Salem's killing.

Ben Salem was 45 and worked for the Canada Revenue Agency. Her body was found around 3:25 p.m. on September 22 in her apartment in the Ville-Marie borough, on René-Lévesque Boulevard near Saint-Christophe Street, after police received a request to check on her welfare. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

She was on a virtual work call with a colleague when she was killed, according to the Montreal Gazette's reporting — a detail that made this case one of the most disturbing workplace tragedies the city has seen. French-language coverage of the case has reported that the colleague on the call witnessed the attack as it happened, turning an ordinary workday video meeting into something no one in the office was prepared for. Police have not publicly confirmed those specifics, and most details of what happened inside the apartment remain under wraps pending the court process.

What happened this week

Montreal police's Major Crimes Section issued an arrest warrant for Moussaoui on Thursday, October 15, and arrested him late that afternoon in Ville-Marie, the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal said in a news release. He appeared Friday at the Montreal courthouse, where he was charged with first-degree murder.

His defence lawyer, Maria Vivas, told reporters outside the courtroom that she doesn't know what relationship, if any, existed between the accused and the victim and that she needs to review the evidence. The accused has no criminal record in Quebec, she said.

The charge is first-degree murder — the most serious homicide charge in Canada, carrying a mandatory life sentence. His next court appearance was set for December 21, according to PEOPLE's court reporting.

Police said the killing did not take place in the context of intimate partner violence. An exact motive remains unclear. The SPVM said \"the various pieces of evidence gathered during the criminal investigation, including the alleged motive for the murder, will be made public during the legal proceedings.\"

As with every charge, it has not been tested in court, and Moussaoui is presumed innocent unless proven otherwise.

A case that shook the city

Ben Salem's death was Montreal's 19th homicide of the year, according to CTV News. It hit especially hard because of how ordinary the setting was — a woman doing her job, on camera with colleagues, in her own home.

The CRA and the Union of Taxation Employees expressed their condolences after her death, and the case drew sympathy across the country, including from members of Parliament.

With a suspect now in custody and a first-degree murder charge laid, the long legal process begins. Police say the answers the public wants — what happened inside that apartment, and why — will come out in court.

Note: the embedded video below is in French, from Noovo Info's coverage of the charge.

Sources

• Canadian HR Reporter — Montreal police arrest suspect in killing of CRA employee during virtual meeting
• PEOPLE — Man charged with first-degree murder in connection with death of woman killed during virtual work meeting
• Kapitalis — Arrestation du suspect dans le meurtre de la Tunisienne Leïla Ben Salem