Police are actively searching for a mugger who tried to push a Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility (MTMD) worker onto a lane of Highway 20 in Mont-Saint-Hilaire so he could be killed. hit by cars.
“I was really afraid of dying,” said the 65-year-old, his eyes red.
For fear of reprisals, the victim of this completely unlikely incident requested that his identity be kept secret.
The father, a former paramedic, has been working at MTMD for a little less than ten years. On Sunday evening, he was in his vehicle when he was called to retrieve parts of a sofa that were stranded on Highway 20 at mile 113.
Once on scene, he stopped his truck and left his Light Arrow on. Then his colleague came to his aid and left his vehicle a few meters behind him.
I almost hit him
“As I was loading debris into my truck, I saw a vehicle swerve to avoid my colleague and then return to our lane,” he explains. Since I was in the front, he drove very close to my truck and almost hit it.”
Angered by this behavior, which unfortunately occurs almost daily, the victim let out a startled cry and raised his arms in the air to express his displeasure.
Visibly annoyed, the angry driver stopped and got out of his vehicle.
“He yelled at me: ‘What the hell!'” said the sixty-year-old, still in shock. And when I told him to leave, he pushed me in the back and I fell to the ground.”
The men then nudged each other. The driver then grabbed the worker and tried to push him to the other side of the road, where cars were driving at full speed.
“Help me! Help me!” the victim shouted to the good Samaritans who had stopped.
When one of them tried to intervene, the mugger is said to have threatened to kill him. He then allegedly fled in his vehicle.
There have currently been no arrests, but the investigation is progressing well, says the Sûreté du Québec.
An increase in incidents
The 65-year-old, like his union, has complained about an increase in violent incidents since the pandemic. Barely 24 hours before his attack, the same worker had seen his van being hit by a speeding driver while blocking a lane as part of a crime scene.
“And it’s not getting better,” says Franck Di Scala, regional president of the Quebec Public and Parapublic Service Union (SFPQ). Workers are often insulted, objects are thrown, coffee is thrown, etc. It is commonplace.”
The MTMD, in turn, indicates that it is taking the situation seriously and is offering support to the victim and the employee who witnessed the events.
Although he said he liked his job before Sunday’s incident, the worker is finding it difficult to consider returning to work under the circumstances.
“I don’t want to end up in a wheelchair or dead and hit by a vehicle,” he says.
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