Chilling details about Luciano Frattolin, a Canadian dad arrested on charges of killing his 9-year-old daughter on a vacation in the US, have emerged. A former friend told the Montreal Gazette that though Luciano Frattolin, the 45-year-old Ethiopian businessman, loved his daughter very much, he did not want to get tied down to her. Melina, the 9-year-old, used to stay with her mother as she had her full custody after their acrimonious divorce and Luciano only met his daughter once a year.“He loved his daughter, but he didn’t like the idea of being tied down,” said the friend, who knew Frattolin when they both lived in Ethiopia.Other than Melina, Luciano had no connection to Montreal and his main base is in Ethiopia.

Luciano Frattolin’s business deals

According to the Montreal Gazette, Frattolin is prominent in Ethiopia because of his many business dealings, including that of a mine, a planned construction of a hotel in Ethiopia connected to a well-known international chain of hotels. In Montreal, Frattolin is listed as the primary shareholder of a numbered company that includes a business called Café Gambella that was created in 2020. On Quebec’s business registry, Frattolin lists two addresses as his residences; one is on Bernard St. W. in Plateau-Mont-Royal and the other is in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Permanent damage to his eye in 2019

Luciano’s former friend revealed that in 2019, he founded a mine along with a company based in Beijing and they secured a 20-year concession to extract iron ore. But soon after the deal, he was assaulted and the attack caused permanent damage to one of his eyes.

Cheated on wife

At that time, Luciano was in Ethiopia recovering from the assault and his wife from Canada went to Ethiopia to visit him. She got to know that he was seeing another woman. This resulted in their divorce and the mother got the full custody of the daughter. On Saturday, Luciano called 911 and reported that his daughter had been kidnapped when he stopped his car to urinate. An amber alert was issued, and police launched into a massive search and investigation only to understand that they were misled by the father. Melina’s body was found Sunday and the autopsy report confirmed that the cause of her death was drowning.