Paul Laplante, the widower and suspected killer of Diane Grégoire, has killed himself in his jail cell. I felt sorry for his kids before, even more so now.
Updates from January, 2012 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Jacques Duchesneau has hopes that the Charbonneau commission will be able to root out the criminal shadow construction commission that he says functions like a board of directors, making major decisions over construction in Quebec.
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Metro has compiled a list of the city’s best outdoor rinks and looks enviously at several other outdoor skating places outside the city.
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Yet more details are percolating out about Farshad Mohammadi: he had a mixed history, known to friends as kindly when he was calm, he could become unpredictably violent, and there was a history of petty crime and drugs too.
Urbania raises an eyebrow about the aspect of the story that suggests police fired on the man after he ran away.
The shooting of Mohammadi is now bringing out statements from the health authorities, from the mayor, from advocates of the homeless, as well as from the police themselves, that there aren’t enough resources to help the homeless and that the police aren’t the people that should be doing it, although they’re clearly often put in that position.
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Tux
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Doobious
I was afraid it was one of the many homeless dudes who make the station their hangout. There seems to be a half dozen of them on the mezzanine level at any given time.
I’m looking forward to reading the SQ’s report and reviewing the STM’s surveillance video so I can make up my own mind as to whether the shooting was justified. As if.
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Kate
Tux, this La Presse account briefly quotes a couple of witnesses. The aspect I’ve seen nothing about is the initial encounter between the cops and Mohammadi and I wonder if anything credible about that will come out.
Doobious, I know what you mean, there are long stone benches as part of the mezzanine design and often there are somewhat rough-looking people sitting on them. Do cops make a point of patrolling from time to time and moving them along?
I’ll be saddened but not surprised if it does turn out to be true that Mohammadi was shot in the back. To me, if someone is coming at you with a weapon, shooting is understandable. Shooting after the event as someone runs away is a hell of a lot less defensible.
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ant6n
Maybe the fear of homeless people piling up is the reason that there are so few benches throughout the whole metro system.
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Michel
I haven’t really followed this story after first hearing about it. However, from what I understood, the confrontation occurred at the de la Gauchetière exit, and not on the mezzanine. The homeless who hang out on the mezzanine tend to mind their own business, from my experience. But, walking out the Gauchetière exit gives me the heebie jeebies. It’s out of the way, not well lit, etc.
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Tux
It seems like nobody actually saw the shots fired, or the knife attack. They saw the gun drawn, heard the shots. A few stories describe Mohammadi as being shot in the process of running away but no-one seems to have seen the actual shooting. Since dead men tell no tales and there’s no way the cops are going to own up to any misconduct, our only hope of any further clues is probably the coroner’s report.
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Doobious
Kate, the “stone” benches are actually terrazzo. Almost all of the architectural detailing was done in this beautiful material, including the stairs, the passerelles and even the walls alongside the escalators. I’m guessing Mr. Prus chose terrazzo to invoke Central Station which makes heavy use of it.
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Police divers have tried repeatedly to find Pierrette Lamy in the Rivière des Prairies, but that search has now been called off and the 72-year-old woman is still on the missing list.
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More than 20,000 landowners in the St. Lawrence Valley are blocking the access of the shale gas industry onto their land.
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Doobious
Amen to that. Seriously, how can anything but bad things come about from stuffing chemicals into the ground?
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Kate
On my recent trip I was in an area where there are fracking stations in some of the fields, and was told there have already been some earthquakes nearby – not part of the world which is normally a seismically active zone. Yikes, if that isn’t a warning, what is?
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Marc
@ Doobious: You are aware that water is a chemical, right? Everything is made of chemicals. Everything.
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ant6n
@Marc: You know that light is not made of chemicals, right? Not Everything.
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Kate
Marc, that’s disingenuous of you. Water is a “chemical” that belongs in the ground. “Some of the [fracking] chemicals pose no known health hazards, some others are known carcinogens, some are toxic, some are neurotoxins. For example: benzene (causes cancer, bone marrow failure), lead (damages the nervous system and causes brain disorders), ethylene glycol (antifreeze, causes death), methanol (highly toxic), boric acid (kidney damage, death), 2-butoxyethanol (causes hemolysis).” (from the Wikipedia article on fracking).
Also the sheer quantity of water injected into the wells is destabilizing, and where does all that water come from? What does such use of water do to our drinking water supply?
We’re doing stuff that causes earthquakes in areas not known for seismic activity. Is that not enough of a warning bell?
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I’m puzzled that no eyewitness accounts seem to have emerged. Did anyone who wasn’t a cop or a dead guy actually see what happened?