A couple killed in their home near Ottawa on Monday were likely murdered over a drug debt, says a grieving relative.

Ghislain Kerney, grandfather of victim Amanda Trottier, also confirms that Trottier’s three-year-old daughter was in the house when Trottier and her boyfriend Travis Votour were killed.

He says it was his son who found the bodies in the Aylmer district of Gatineau, Que.

“Amanda texts her father every morning, she didn’t (Monday),” Kerney told QMI Agency’s sister news channel, LCN, on Tuesday.

“He waited until about noon or 1 o’clock and he went to the house. He opened the door and his daughter was on the floor. He screamed and his granddaughter Savannah didn’t answer. She was upstairs playing.”

The father then called 911.

Kerney says the couple had drug problems that could have landed them in their dealers’ bad books.

“Apparently they had received threats at their home a month before,” said Kerney. “It could be a settling of accounts, that’s for sure.”

Kerney recalls that his granddaughter visited him nearly every day with Savannah. Votour had been dating Trottier for several years but was not Savannah’s father and was unemployed, says Kerney.

“Travis wasn’t doing anything, he was on welfare,” said Kerney, who added that little Savannah was caught in the middle of a dangerous lifestyle.

“It’s very sad. Savannah was alone with her mother. We don’t know what was going on with the girl. She’s three years old and doesn’t talk much. The damned drugs!”

Gatineau police have set up a command post and they have already met a dozen neighbours and relatives of the dead couple.

Autopsies were to be performed on the bodies on Tuesday in Montreal.

Anyone with information can contact investigators at (819) 243-2346 ext. 6677.