He seemed lost, "did not fit in", had drug problems, and went more than five years without seeing his mother.
In recent weeks, he had been living at a homeless shelter and had talked about wanting to go to Libya - or Syria - but became agitated when he couldn't get a passport.
A day after Michael Zehaf-Bibeau launched a deadly attack on Canada's seat of government, a portrait of the 32-year-old Canadian began to emerge, along with a possible explanation for what triggered the shooting rampage.
Bob Paulson, commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, said that Zehaf-Bibeau - a recent Muslim convert whose father was from Libya - may have lashed out in frustration over delays in obtaining a passport.
"I think the passport figured prominently in his motives. I'm not inside his head, but I think it was central to what was driving him," Paulson said.
In what the prime minister called a terrorist attack, Bibeau shot dead a soldier at Canada's national war memorial on Wednesday, then stormed the parliament building, where he was gunned down by the sergeant-at-arms.
The attack was the second deadly assault on Canadian soldiers in three days and forced the country to confront the danger of radicalised citizens in its midst.
Zehaf-Bibeau's passport application "was not rejected. His passport was not revoked", Paulson said.
"He was waiting to get it and there was an investigation going on to determine to see whether he would get a passport."
Zehalf-Bibeau was a petty criminal with a long rap sheet, including a string of drug offences.
Abubakir Abdelkareem, who often visited the Ottawa Mission, a homeless shelter downtown where Zehaf-Bibeau stayed in recent weeks, said Zehaf-Bibeau told him he had had a drug problem but had been clean for three months and was trying to steer clear of temptation by going to Libya.
But in the past three days, "his personality changed completely", Abdelkareem said.
"He was not talkative; he was not social" anymore and slept during the day, said Abdelkareem, who concluded the man was back on drugs.
Lloyd Maxwell, another shelter resident, said that Zehaf-Bibeau had lived for some time in Vancouver, then Calgary, then came to Ottawa specifically to try to get a passport, believing that would be more easily accomplished in the nation's capital.
"He didn't get it, and that made him very agitated," Maxwell said.
Maxwell said that he suggested to the man that he might be on a no-fly list, and "he kind of looked at me funny, and he walked away".
Expressing horror and sadness at what happened, Zehaf-Bibeau's mother, Susan Bideau, said that her son seemed lost and "did not fit in", and that she hadn't seen him for more than five years until having lunch with him last week.
"So I have very little insight to offer," she said.
She says she is crying for the victims of the shooting rampage, not her son.
"Can you ever explain something like this?" said Bibeau, who has homes in Montreal and Ottawa. "We are sorry."
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