Neighbors at a closed daycare center that was riddled by bullets in Rivière-des-Prairies late Tuesday afternoon fear their neighborhood is becoming the scene of a growing number of such incidents.
Posted at 5:26pm
Vincent Larin The Press
On Wednesday, the impact of the shots was still clearly visible in the window of the Bambino II day-care center on Boulevard André Ampère. The calm of the neighborhood contrasted with the scene of the previous day’s violence.
At the end of the afternoon, around 5:30 p.m., officers from the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) were called to the scene after being alerted by 9-1-1 gunfire in the area.
“At the scene, police found housing on the ground and impacts on a vehicle and a shop window,” SPVM spokeswoman Caroline Chevrefils said on Wednesday, adding that no suspect has been arrested. The event claimed no victims.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, THE PRESS
The bullet holes were still clearly visible on the closed shop front on Tuesday.
next to children
However, while Bambino II Educational Daycare was empty at the time of the shooting, another owned by the same owner, a stone’s throw away, was still crowded with children.
“The kids were outside, they were playing,” says nearby grocery store owner Joe Bertin. “I didn’t even think it was gunshots, I thought it was firecrackers,” he adds, adding that he quickly understood the scale of the case when “there were 3 or 4 police cars.”
Across the street, the owner of the two daycare centers declined La Presse’s request for an interview.
6 or 7 bars
Caroline Courtemanche was in the living room of her apartment right next to the property. “My youngest squeaked in the window when she heard that. I immediately grabbed her to get her up again and said to her: Come on, what are you doing here,” she says.
PHOTO ALAIN ROBERGE, THE PRESS
Caroline Courtemanche has lived in Rivière-des-Prairies for 40 years. She says she’s seen an increase in gunshots over the past decade.
She says she heard 6 or 7 detonations in total, then she saw two sports cars, one black and one white, leaving the scene at top speed.
“It’s not that it doesn’t worry me, but it’s everywhere in Montreal,” says the mother-of-two, who has lived in Rivière-des-Prairies for 40 years and has seen an increase in beatings in recent years.
“A lot of stress”
“My children were at home, thank God,” his neighbor Sabrina blows. When I get home from work at midnight in the evening, it causes me a lot of stress to miss it.
Witnesses met by La Presse still remember a shooting that took place a few blocks away on Boulevard Perras last year that left three dead and two injured.
A neighbor of the scene for 35 years, Claude Pottier judges today that it is no longer a “good industry”. “There isn’t a lot of shooting, but there is movement,” he said, adding that he found the situation “worrying”.