FORT MCMURRAY, ALTA.—A man who fell six storeys from a Fort McMurray apartment where police made an arrest linked to the Rob Ford crack video scandal was secretly spirited away by police to a remote Alberta hospital.

Hanad Hussein, 25, is in intensive care with back and chest injuries after he fell from a sixth-floor balcony late last week at the River Park Glen apartment complex — the same apartment where, three weeks ago, Hanad Mohamed, 23, was arrested and charged in the shooting death of Toronto man Anthony Smith.

Hussein’s family say they believe the married father was thrown from the sixth floor following an altercation inside an apartment occupied by a female relative of Mohamed.

His wallet and iPhone have been missing since the incident, his family says.

The RMCP have not named Hussein publicly and won’t say if they are keeping his identity and location secret because of a suspected link with the Ford scandal. They say there is currently no indication Hussein’s ordeal is related to any other incident.

The Star located Hussein, who is suffering from several broken ribs and back injuries, and spoke at length with his sister and an aunt.

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They said Hussein was slowly recovering but is in no condition to speak publicly about his ordeal. They believe his memory may also be affected.

Hussein’s sister, Leyla Hussein, 26, said she is “100-per-cent positive” her brother is not connected to the Ford scandal in any way and is the unfortunate victim of circumstance.

“Our concern is that people will think he was somehow involved with the Rob Ford scandal, but he is not. He is a good man and a good father,” she said. “It has to do with issues of jealousy related to the girl he may have been staying with that night. We believe this was a case of simply being at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

The family does not know why he was at the apartment.

Leyla Hussein said her brother travelled to Fort McMurray early last week to look for work and at the time of the incident was staying with a woman she believes to be Hanad Mohamed’s sister. River Park Glen residents interviewed by the Star also said they believed the woman Hussein was staying with when he fell was Mohamed’s sister. The Star was unable to confirm this.

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Leyla Hussein said her family believes an altercation fueled by “jealousy” is what led to her brother being thrown from the apartment.

“We believe my brother was friends with this girl and some other guys were jealous,” she said.

The route that led Hussein to Fort McMurray is familiar to many in Toronto’s Somali-Canadian community.

Originally from Mogadishu, Hussein came to Canada in 2008 in search of a better life, his sister says. He settled in Toronto and worked as a forklift operator but found that limited employment opportunities made it tough to support his young and growing family.

So, like so many before him, he headed west, hoping to land one of the lucrative oil sands jobs that drive Alberta’s economic engine.

“He is always so ready to work, if given the chance,” Farhan Muse, 29, said through a translator.

Muse accompanied his friend Hussein to Edmonton in early May, also looking to make his mark. “Hanad was constantly thinking of his wife and children back in Toronto,” he said.

Hussein had planned to find a job in that city or Fort McMurray before sending for his wife, Sofia, who is eight months pregnant, and toddler son Samir.

But then the unthinkable happened.

Residents of the apartment complex in downtown Fort McMurray say that around 5:30 a.m. on Thursday, June 6, they heard male voices loudly arguing in a sixth-floor apartment on the south side of tower two.

“I heard yelling, but I don’t know what it was about,” one neighbour told the Star, asking to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation. She described waking up after hearing a noise at about 6:30 a.m. When she looked from her balcony, she saw Hussein lying on the grassy lawn below.

“I couldn’t eat anything all day because of the noise I heard and the sight of the guy on the ground,” she said.

Sister Leyla said she was incredulous when first she was informed of the incident by someone from the Somali-Canadian community in Fort McMurray.

“I believe 100 per cent that this has nothing to do with the Rob Ford thing. My brother has never been involved with the other Hanad (Mohamed),” she said. “Even when he was in Toronto, my brother had no connection to these people and has never been in trouble. He’s a family man.”

Hussein’s wife and child are now in Alberta but far from his hospital room, awaiting news.

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