MONTREAL – Quebec provincial police say it appears the man suspected of shooting three people to death in the Montreal area earlier this week chose his victims at random and had mental health issues.
MONTREAL – Quebec provincial police say it appears the man suspected of shooting three people to death in the Montreal area earlier this week chose his victims at random and had mental health issues.
Montreal police shot and killed a 26-year-old man allegedly linked to three homicides on Thursday. Quebec’s independent police watchdog is investigating. At the request of the watchdog, the three homicide investigations in Montreal and Laval, Quebec, a northern suburb of the city, were transferred to the Quebec provincial police.
The 26-year-old man suspected of randomly shooting three people dead in the street on Tuesday and Wednesday did not appear to have any link to the three victims, the provincial police spokeswoman Sgt. Audrey-Anne Bilodeau told reporters. Investigators believe he acted alone and was not linked to organized crime, she added.
Speaking at the scene Thursday, Bilodeau said the suspect had previously been visited by Montreal police for mental health-related interventions.
“We are trying to establish this man’s motivations,” Bilodeau said, adding that it is not clear if he intended to kill again.
Earlier in the day, Montreal police said they killed a murder suspect during a police operation at a motel on Marcel-Laurin Boulevard in the city’s St-Laurent district, referring all questions to the watchdog. of the police, the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes. The watchdog, also known as the BEI, said the Montreal police tactical unit was at a motel around 7 a.m. for a search related to an investigation into three recent homicides in Montreal and Laval.
The watchdog said preliminary information is that Montreal officers were confronted by a suspect with a firearm. He said shots were fired and the man took at least one bullet and was pronounced dead at the scene.
The EIB, which investigates when someone is injured or killed during a police operation, said seven investigators are assigned to the case.
The police operation came after a pair of murders about 65 minutes apart and a few kilometers away Tuesday night in Montreal, in the St-Laurent and Ahuntsic-Cartierville districts. One of the Montreal victims Tuesday night was identified as André Fernand Lemieux, 64, the father of Canadian professional boxer David Lemieux. The other victim was Mohamed Salah Belhaj, 48, an intervention officer at a local mental health hospital.
A senior Montreal police spokesman said Wednesday that investigators were certain a single suspect was behind both murders and were awaiting ballistics evidence to confirm it.
At around 9:30 pm on Wednesday, a third man was killed in Laval. Laval police spokeswoman Stéphanie Beshara said police received numerous 911 calls for gunshots in a residential area of the Laval-des-Rapides neighborhood and found a 22-year-old man who had been shot. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Beshara said Laval police were present at the Montreal motel on Thursday where the suspect was killed. They do not rule out that the murder in his territory was also a random attack.
Daryl Holmes, a resident of the St-Laurent district, where the first murder occurred at a bus stop and where the suspect was taken to the Pierre Motel, said Thursday that he was shaken by the brazen violence in the neighborhood.
“I’m a little bit worried. I take the bus, I work (at night), and yesterday when I heard the news, I said to myself there is no way I am going to take the bus in the area,” Holmes said. that he opted for an Uber.
Holmes said that even if he is certain a suspect has been found, he is considering leaving the neighborhood where he has lived his entire life.
“It’s not a safe place anymore,” Holmes said, explaining that in his youth, kids could leave their bikes unattended outside without fear of being stolen.
“Now you can’t even open the door because you never know what’s going to happen,” he said.
Police don’t usually speak up once a BEI investigation is launched, but interim Montreal Police Chief Sophie Roy briefly touched on the killings on Thursday.
“They are parents, spouses, grandparents and friends,” Roy said of the two Montreal victims. He also offered his condolences to the family of the third victim, a man in his 20s who was shot in Laval. He said that since Tuesday night, all police investigation teams have been working “day and night to solve the crimes.”
“After hours of intense searches, the investigation allowed us to identify a suspect who was neutralized,” he said, declining to answer questions due to the independent investigation.
On Thursday, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante thanked Montreal, Laval and the provincial police for their “efficiency and dedication to the safety of Montrealers.”
“The last 48 hours have been difficult for everyone,” he wrote in a series of tweets. “It is during these moments that we must all work together and trust our authorities in a common goal of guaranteeing the safety of our population.”
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on August 4, 2022.
— with archives of Stéphane Blais in Montreal.
Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press
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