Published at 2:37 am. Updated at 6:00 am.
A dangerous criminal is brought to justice. During the break, he beats up the agents and flees towards the judge’s corridor. This is the extraordinary and frightening scenario that unfolded at the Montreal courthouse two years ago.
“It was very, very difficult,” correctional officer Audrey Laferrière testified in the trial of Alexis Barnabé-Paradis at the end of September. The victim suffered lifelong scars from this attack.
The 43-year-old man is one of the most violent criminals in Quebec in recent years. Already sentenced to an indefinite prison sentence for a deliberate attack on a stranger, he was sentenced last winter to 18 years in prison for an extremely brutal attempted murder.
On the very first day of his trial in this case, Barnabé-Paradis went off the rails on October 5, 2021, resulting in the trial being canceled and a second jury being formed.
Alexis Barnabé-Paradis pleaded guilty Sept. 22 to charges of aggravated assault on a correctional officer, prison breach, mischief and resisting arrest.
But when, as expected, it came time to plead guilty to injuring a correctional officer, Barnabé-Paradis turned away.
“I never touched her. That’s not true,” he said.
A comment that forced the initiation of a trial on this accusation.
Violent attack
Audrey Laferrière was assigned to the trial of Alexis Barnabé-Paradis in October 2021. During the break, she and her colleague left the defendant’s box and took the defendant to a cell in an area that cannot be seen from the courtroom.
He was not wearing handcuffs or a mask. He didn’t want to cooperate. We wanted him to put on his mask and handcuffs. He didn’t want to, he said he had to urinate. He refused several times.
Correctional officer Audrey Laferrière
At that moment Barnabé-Paradis would have exploded.
“He punched my colleague in the face and then pushed him to the back of the cell. I was at the door. I had time to take a step back. The gentleman rushed forward and punched me on the left side of the jaw,” Ms. Laferrière said.
The correctional officer says she saw the man break the plumbing plexiglass and then walk to the door leading to the hallway reserved for jurors and judges. According to them, there were only one police officer and one police officer in the room.
His still stunned colleague then appears with handcuffs. He was then beaten up by the defendant, she said.
“I ran, jumped onto the chair and grabbed Mr. Barnabé by the neck. I lay on his back with my legs hanging in the air. Then my colleague was able to free himself from the situation. “I got hit in the head,” she testified.
Finally, special police officers arrived as reinforcements to help the correctional officer control Barnabé-Paradis.
“I walked towards my colleague and collapsed. I had Mr. Barnabas’ blood all over my shirt. His arm was bleeding. He had scalped him in Plexiglas. I started crying,” she said.
This attack had significant consequences for his life. She suffered a severe concussion, an arm injury and post-traumatic shock.
Mismatched version
“I don’t travel the world for nothing. I have no malice. […] He was looking for it. If he hadn’t hurt me in the beginning, I wouldn’t have hurt him. »
This is how Alexis Barnabé-Paradis justifies his attack on the correctional officer. He accuses him of injuring him by pulling on his handcuffs while he insisted on going to the toilet. If he admits this attack, he denies having met Audrey Laferrière. “I never touched the lady,” he swears.
Her story differs from that of the complainant in one important respect. In fact, Barnabé-Paradis claims to have beaten the correctional officer in front of the judge and his lawyer, rather than in a cell outside the courtroom.
I waited until I was in the courtroom until my lawyer asked to take the handcuffs off, and then I hit the man. […] The jury wasn’t there yet, just the judge.
The defendant Alexis Barnabé-Paradis
This surprising version, put forward under cross-examination, derailed the trial because, according to him, his current lawyer, Me Catherine Daniel Houle, had witnessed the entire scene. And according to him, she was the one who asked to have his handcuffs removed shortly before the attack.
The prosecutor Me Geneviève Boutet therefore requested that Me Daniel Houle be excluded from defending his client. “She is a convincing witness. She cannot act in this matter,” Me Boutet argued. The trial is therefore suspended until Judge Roxane Laporte decides this issue.
Note that in 2021, a spokesperson for the Supreme Court told La Presse that the judge followed standard procedure in unleashing Barnabé-Paradis.