The youngest homicide victim in Edmonton in 2018 was a six-month-old baby girl, found stabbed in her home in December. The oldest was a 74-year-old man, allegedly killed during a bar fight in September.
The city recorded 27 homicides in total this year, although that number could change, pending toxicology results in the case of an elderly woman who was found dead in her Oliver-area apartment in September. An injured man was also found in the suite at the time.
This year’s number represents a drop from the 42 homicides police recorded at the end of 2017. It’s also well below the record 48 homicides police dealt with in 2011.
Of the 27 homicides that happened this year, police did not identify the victims in 10 cases, or roughly 40 per cent of the time — the same percentage as 2017.
The vast majority of the homicide victims were men. Just five of the 27 victims were women — all of the adult females appeared to be, or had been, in intimate relationships with the men accused of killing them. Two young girls were also killed in 2018.
According to the Edmonton Police Service, 12 homicides from 2018 remain under investigation. The EPS homicide unit declined a year-end interview to discuss the year’s homicide numbers.
There were also two fatal officer-involved shootings in Edmonton in 2018 that are currently being investigated by the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT). CBC does not include these deaths in the 2018 homicide count, in accordance with how statistics are kept by Edmonton police and Statistics Canada.
The following interactive map provides all the information that CBC has available for each homicide case of 2018.