Farhan Omar was no angel, family members say.
But they say he didn't deserve to die, knifed three times in the back, in what they call a "moment of madness" among friends.
The 22-year-old Mississauga man died early Saturday at a Toronto hospital after he was stabbed in a children's playground beside his Cooksville apartment after an argument with a friend.
Relatives say he had gone inside to change his bloody clothes to return to the fray when he collapsed in the ground floor unit on Rathburn Rd. W. at Creditview Rd. at the dinner hour on Friday.
Doctors at Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga and Sunnybrook hospital in Toronto were unable to stop the bleeding.
"As fast as they pumped blood into him, it just kept coming out," said Farhan's brother, Abdinoor Omar, 40, with whom Farhan lived.
Omar said his brother had been with a group of chums about 5:30 p.m. on Friday when an argument with a friend escalated into a full-blown fight.
He said one of Farhan's friends went into the building, grabbed a knife from another friend's apartment, and plunged it into Farhan's back.
"He was stabbed one, two, three times in the back," Omar said. "He didn't feel too bad at first and came inside to change and then go back to the fight. But he just collapsed in blood on the floor."
Omar said his young brother, one of 16 siblings born in Somalia, had earned top marks in school after coming to Canada in 1995.
"But things went wrong in high school. He got involved with the wrong crowd."
Omar said his brother never took drugs or got involved in gang activity.
But he drank alcohol, against Muslim law, which upset his family. He was charged with impaired driving last year, paid a fine and was to have had his licence reinstated next month.
"He had no enemies, whatsoever," Omar said.
He said his brother's accused killer had visited in their apartment many times, occasionally staying overnight.
"It was just a moment of madness," a cousin said. "He was a good boy. He was not perfect, but he was not a criminal.
"It was a simple fight. They must have trash-talked each other and then one guy decided he couldn't take that."
Tristan Landriault, 20, of Brampton is charged with second-degree murder.
He was remanded in custody during a weekend appearance in Brampton court.
