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He had begun this voyage as a homeless petty criminal, besieged by dubious mental health and chronic drug addiction. He ended it as the new face of homegrown Islamic extremism, his corpse sprawled a few dozen metres away from the most powerful man in the country.

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Everyone knew something was very wrong with Martin Couture-Rouleau.

Neighbours who had known him as a smiling teen quick with a cheery “bonjour” barely recognized the insular 25-year-old who kept his head down and said nothing.

Friends saw him falling heavily into a new religion soon after his bid to start his own power-washing cleaning business failed.

He grew a long beard, wrote out the Koran over and over, then started gorging on Internet “jihadi-porn,” as one friend termed it. He became estranged from friends and family and his infant child. He seemed brainwashed, some said.

On Facebook, under his new name, Ahmad Rouleau, he spouted conspiracy theories, bashed American policies and military, and became so radicalized his father called police last June.

The RCMP arrested him at the airport a month later when he tried to fly to Turkey, a common stopover for those eager to fight in Syria or Iraq. Lacking clear evidence of terrorist or criminal intent, prosecutors advised officers to let him go. They seized his passport and Couture-Rouleau became one of 93 individuals under active RCMP surveillance across the country.

RCMP outreach officers met with him several times over four months to try to change his way of thinking, “to avoid him turning to violence,” as did the imam from the modest strip-mall mosque Couture-Rouleau had joined. In their last meeting on Oct. 9, police thought they were making progress.