While the province's courthouses overflow with tragic stories, human tragedies and ruthless criminals, stories occasionally emerge of litigants who found a way out of trouble themselves or who made the authorities' work easier. A look at these sometimes crazy, sometimes literally dispiriting stories that marked 2023 in the Quebec region.
Thieves who leave traces
A few days before Christmas 2022, witnesses saw Maxime Duchesne Gadoury and an accomplice leaving a house with several stolen goods.
Neighbors then saw the thieves placing the items in a wheeled bin to make their escape easier. However, the two wheels of the ferry left clear marks in the snow, so the investigation was quite easy for the police. All the agents had to do was follow the trail to track down the thieves and their loot.
Duchesne Gadoury was sentenced to 18 months in prison for burglary and stealing mail from residences.
He shares his photos of the victim with…the victim!
Alexandre Bradley was sharing an apartment with a long-time friend when he photographed the woman naked while she slept. The problem? The automatic photo sharing function between the defendant's Google account and that of his victim was activated. That's why the young woman woke up the next day and was astonished to discover the photos on her cell phone and with them the crime her roommate had committed.
Then, a little later, Bradley took his roommate's cell phone without her knowledge and transferred several intimate videos of the young woman to himself via the messenger application. When he filed a complaint about the two incidents and the investigators confiscated the defendant's computer equipment, they did not find any videos of a sexual nature, but rather a montage of the entire videos in the device, which were strung together and lasted 40 minutes.
Alexandre Bradley pleaded guilty and his case is due back in court next March.
A “firecracker lover” gets 18 months in prison
Éric Lachance is categorical: he never wanted to harm anyone, he is just a “firecracker lover”.
In fact, he's so excited that he even modified his drone so that it could successfully fire explosives from the machine – a “hobby” that the neighbors didn't appreciate. The first reports to the police reported “explosions in the sky”.
Under police surveillance, Lachance even put on a private “show” for the agents monitoring him by setting off “firecrackers” in front of them, the detonation causing “the windows of the unmarked vehicle to vibrate,” according to the agents in mentioned their report.
When handing down his 18-month prison sentence, Judge Sarah-Julie Chicoine made a point of advising Éric Lachance to “change his hobbies”.
He is accused of sexual assault and strengthens his case by attacking a journalist
Gabriel Chabot-Gagné was working as a security guard at the Musée de la Civilization when he attacked female visitors to the place and committed sexual assaults, which he admitted with a guilty plea. But his case became more difficult when he appeared for a court date at the Quebec courthouse.
Screenshot of a video provided by Radio-Canada
Angry at being filmed by a journalist stationed in one of the designated areas, the twenty-something man attacked the Radio-Canada employee by trying to snatch his cell phone. The defendant then hit the journalist with the back of his hand.
And as if that wasn't enough, when the person was brought into a conference room by his lawyer, he knocked over the table that was there.
These outbursts of anger led to further assault charges being filed.
The court imposes a curfew on him
Definition of “immanent justice,” also called poetic justice: situation in which vice is punished in an ironically appropriate manner.
This definition applies perfectly to the case of Samuel Doré, an anti-sanitation conspirator who destroyed a vaccination clinic and also attacked a security guard who surprised him with an ax.
Photo Nicolas Saillant
Samuel Dore
For his crimes, the man from the Portneuf region was sentenced by the judge to a weekend sentence of 90 days, coupled with 12 months of house arrest, during which he will be subjected to… camouflage firing. Ironic when we know that measures like the curfew motivated him to commit the crime in the first place.
A trip to Ottawa that cost him a year in prison
Vincent Daigle's lawyer did a good job and managed to negotiate a three-year prison sentence for the man with the crown. Especially since his record was full of convictions for sexual assaults on two companions, death threats against his own parents and dangerous driving.
Photo courtesy of Sûreté du Québec
But the deal came with a condition of completing three months of therapy before going to prison, which was obviously too much to ask of the criminal, who strained himself in the moments after his arrival at the therapy house.
Result of his six-week escape that led to his arrest in the Ottawa area? The original agreement was “extended” by twelve months, and his sentence increased from three to four years in prison.
“Compression start” your car to beat the alcohol test
Stéphane Gagné already had a driving ban and an alcohol ignition interlock. After a dinner where he drank a few beers in February 2021, he tried to thwart the system.
The repeat drunk driver had the bright idea of tying his vehicle behind a friend's to try to “drive away on the road,” as Judge Sandra Rioux recounted during sentencing in March last year. The problem is that the police apparently intercepted “the two vehicles connected by a rope that were driving on Boulevard Pierre-Bertrand.”
And worst of all, Gagné had been arrested less than six months earlier, unconscious behind the wheel of his car under the influence of cocaine and methamphetamine.
Judge Rioux sentenced him to 34 months in prison for these crimes and numerous administrative offenses and regretted that Stéphane Gagné had already been convicted of driving while impaired seven times before these events.
A sovereign citizen in prison
Amoury Lapointe, a self-proclaimed “gentleman of peace,” was sentenced to 60 days in prison in October for obstructing and refusing to identify himself during a highway surveillance operation.
Screenshot from Facebook Amo Aud Vincit
This is because the man is part of the “sovereign citizens” movement, a group of people who refuse to recognize the authority of the government. This was the reason why Lapointe did not stop when an SQ patrol officer intercepted him traveling at 77 mph (127 km/h) on the highway.
The man arrested seven kilometers away gave the police officer a fake ID saying he was a “proud member of the Quebec Constitutional Sheriffs.”
Taken from Facebook “Amo Aud Vincit”
He then locked himself in his vehicle and claimed it was the police officer who obstructed him.
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