Dressed in black and with a scarf covering his face, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau is the man believed to have killed a soldier point-blank and then opened fire in a parliamentary building in Canada's capital city.
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More details have emerged about the 32-year-old suspected gunman who sent Ottawa into lockdown on Wednesday morning local time (1am AEDT Thursday).
According to Canada's Globe and Mail, his father Bulgasem Zehaf was a Quebec businessman who appears to have fought in Libya in 2011. His mother Susan was deputy chairwoman of a division of Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board.
David Bathurst, a friend who met Zehaf-Bibeau at a mosque three years ago, said he was obsessed with "shaytan", the Arabic term for the devil.
Mr Bathurst told the Globe and Mail that his friend had "erratic" behaviour and was asked to stop attending prayers at the mosque after upsetting religious elders.
"We were having a conversation in a kitchen, and I don't know how he worded it: He said the devil is after him," David Bathurst told the publication. "I think he must have been mentally ill."
Mr Bathurst said the last time he saw Zehaf-Bibeau at a Vancouver mosque six weeks ago, he was planning to go back to Libya to study Islam and Arabic.
But Zehaf-Bibeau's travel plans are believed to have been quashed. He was known to authorities and reportedly couldn't get travel documents because his name was on a terror watch list.
In fact, Zehaf-Bibeau had a long history of run-ins with police. He had been arrested for drug possession, credit-card fraud and robbery.
Vancouver lawyer Brian Anderson, who acted for Zehaf-Bibeau in 2011, said he was charged with robbing someone and it was something "fairly minor and fairly bizarre" to which he pleaded guilty.
Zehaf-Bibeau was a recent convert to Islam who had been born Michael Joseph Hall but had changed his name, Reuters reported, citing US federal sources.
He is believed to have been born in Quebec but had a history of moving around in recent years, including a stop in Vancouver.
A picture released by Canadian media purports to show Zehaf-Bibeau during the shootings. The man in the picture has shoulder-length black hair, is wearing a black and white chequered scarf around his face and is holding a firearm.
Dashcam footage sent to CBC by a witness also appears to show the gunman getting into an illegally parked car with no licence plate. He appears to be carrying a long, dark object. The time stamp of the video matches the same time police started receiving 911 calls.
Zehaf-Bibeau is believed to have shot and killed 24-year-old Nathan Cirillo while he stood guard at an Ottawa war memorial.
"What I saw was one person shot," said Yan Legtenvorg, a tourist from Holland who was at the war memorial. He ran "to Parliament Hill with his rifle in his hand. Small guy with long black hair. We heard four shots and we saw the guy running away with a long rifle."
The gunman then made his way into the country's main legislature across the street and opened fire, before being shot dead by Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers.
An Ottawa Hospital spokeswoman said the hospital treated three people injured in the shooting for gunshot and other wounds.
The Globe and Mail reporters said no one answered the door at Zehaf-Bibeau's mother's Montreal townhouse and neither she nor his father could be reached.
Wednesday's shooting was the second attack on Canadian soldiers in a week.
On Monday, Martin Couture-Rouleau, a 25-year-old who converted to Islam last year, rammed his car into two soldiers in the Quebec town of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and was shot dead by police. One of the soldiers later died.
Couture-Rouleau was among 90 people being tracked by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on suspicion of taking part in militant activities abroad or planning to do so.
No group, Islamic or otherwise, claimed responsibility for either the attack in Ottawa or the one near Montreal on Monday.
Fairfax Media with agencies
