Youth workers in downtown Ottawa are helping street kids deal with the murder of a friend who was stabbed to death after an altercation in the pedestrian underpass next to the Rideau Centre early Wednesday morning.

Social worker Erica Tomkinson bought coffee for Beriault the day before he was murdered.
Social worker Erica Tomkinson bought coffee for Beriault the day before he was murdered.

Staff at the Youth Services Bureau, on Besserer Street, say friends of Steven Beriault, 21, arrived at the drop-in centre before it opened Wednesday morning.

"We've given them space right now so they can be with each another and talk about good times and bad times, and laugh and cry, and deal with it as they need to deal with it," said Liette Duguay, who coordinates the drop-in centre. "And we've let them know we're here, and they know where to find us." The bureau will try to place the street kids in shelters, as most of them are now afraid to sleep in the underpass that had become their home.

Beriault — known as Cactus to his friends — was one of a half-dozen youths sleeping in the underpass at the corner of Rideau Street and Sussex Drive when a stranger arrived just after midnight Wednesday morning and started urinating on the stairs.

"We were sleeping under the bridge. Big … guy comes up and starts peeing on the stairs," Matthew Perron alleged to CBC TV. "My buddy Cactus decides to get in his face, tell him off. The guy threatens him. Cactus hits him, and the guy starts stabbing with a knife."

Ottawa police are still searching for a man in his mid-twenties with a muscular build. Police say he is not a street person.

As many as 80 young people live outside in the Rideau Street area, which is on the southern edge of the Byward Market. Generally, they say they watch out for each other, and Beriault was someone they say they could depend on.

"He was a crazy French guy," said Becky Dudley. "He was there for his friends. He's been through hell, and he's always been okay. It's not fair."

Perron added Beriault was "just one of the greatest guys I've ever had the privilege to meet. If you needed a friend, he was your friend."

He was a familiar face at the nearby Operation Go Home, a youth drop-in centre. Social worker Erica Tomkinson bought him a coffee on Tuesday morning.

'"I feel very, very saddened by this whole thing. It's just really, really bad," she said.

Flowers have been placed at the scene of the stabbing, and staff at the Youth Service Bureau say they will help plan a vigil for Beriault, whose family lives in Gatineau.