Two young members of a street gang, including a person considered by police to be a “poster child for violence in Laval”, are accused of murdering the right arm of another gang leader at the exit of a bar in August 2021.
Sylvain Kabbouchi, 23, and Tarek Youssef Baydoun, 27, were arrested by the Sûreté du Québec Tuesday morning while being held in custody on other counts.
WITH KIND PHOTO
Tarek Youssef Baydoun
The two Laval residents are charged with first-degree murder for killing Nitchell Lapaix.
The young men, believed to be members of the Laval Chomedey 45 gang, will appear at the Montreal courthouse in the afternoon.
In the early morning of August 17, 2021, Lapaix was exiting a Jesus Island strip club when he was riddled with bullets.
ARCHIVE PHOTO, AGENCY QMI (MAXIME DELAND)
The victim had been released from prison only three months earlier and had a long history of possession of narcotics, assault and assault with a gun on a peace officer.
According to our information, Nitchell Lapaix was close to Jean-Philippe Célestin, who is believed by the police to be the leader of the gang.
With kind approval
Nitchell Lapaix
The murder is linked to control of the Laval drug area, according to Captain Martin Robert of the Sûreté du Québec Investigative Division.
“Witnesses are being sought, surveillance cameras, meetings with whistleblowers, analysis of cell towers and the scene that have enabled us to obtain the necessary information,” he said in an interview with Le Log.
Photo Pierre Paul Poulin
Captain Martin Robert of the Sûreté du Québec Organized Crime Murders and Disappearances Investigations Unit
It would not be the first crime committed by the two young men together as they are charged together in Ontario with the attempted murder of a young Montrealer, the SQ said.
Multiple folders
Further charges are also being brought against Kabbouchi: he now faces charges of forcible detention, disposal of a firearm and robbery in connection with an incident in Boisbriand a few days before the killing of Lapaix.
The causes are therefore piling up for the defendant, who is awaiting trial in a kidnapping case that occurred in Laval last January.
With accomplices, he is said to have kidnapped a pregnant woman from her home after a dispute over a cryptocurrency transaction that allegedly went wrong.
He is also currently under investigation for drug trafficking, conspiracy and threats. He was charged after 2kg of carfentanyl, a drug 100 times stronger than fentanyl, was seized in Granby in December 2021.
“We arrested a real poster child for violence in Laval. He is involved in all crimes: collection, trafficking, discharging firearms, kidnapping and now murder too,” illustrated Captain Robert.
Kabbouchi had been the target of two assassination attempts in recent years.
For his part, Baydoun is behind bars awaiting trial for various firearms offenses believed to have taken place in July and August 2021.
He had been released from prison just months earlier after being behind bars since June 2017 for stealing more than $1 million in jewelry from a 70-year-old.
Other murders solved by the organized crime homicides and enforced disappearances unit
- Joshua Sarroino was charged with the murder of Eric Francis De Souza last January. Almost three years earlier, the victim had been shot while sitting in the Sofia restaurant in the Dix30 neighborhood of Brossard.
- In April, Wally-Isaya Laguerre-Lamarre, Isahia Paulotte, Donte Malik Strachan and Tyann Strachan were charged in the December 2020 murder of Ryan Bracken at a tattoo parlor in Gatineau.
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