Jonathan Dubé saw his own death, when he came face to face with Richard Henry Bain “playing” with his rifle. His “surrogate father”, Denis Blanchette, had just been shot. Since the Metropolis attack in 2012, the stage technician has sunk into a spiral of suffering, drugs and wandering.
Posted at 7:49 p.m.
Updated at 9:56 p.m.
“It destroyed my life. Even if I won $1 million tomorrow, it wouldn’t make me want to live. I lost all taste for life, ”said the burly stage technician on Wednesday on the second day of the civil trial at the Montreal courthouse.
Jonathan Dubé is one of four survivors of the Metropolis attack to sue the Sûreté du Québec and the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal for damages suffered due to poor security on the night of Pauline Marois’ election. . Guillaume Parisien, Audrey Dulong Bérubé, Gael Ghiringhelli and Jonathan Dubé are each claiming $125,000, plus $100,000 in punitive damages.
On the evening of September 4, 2012, Jonathan Dubé waited with his technician friends on the stairs in the artists’ entrance outside the performance hall. His shift starts in a few minutes, at midnight. Time to smoke a “cigarette”, therefore. Inside, the triumph of the Parti Québécois is highlighted.
“We were laughing when Richard Bain arrived wearing a hood. A loud bang is heard. It knocked me out, like a kind of pressure. It destabilized me, not enough to fall, but enough to have to hold me back, ”he says.
I came face to face with the suspect who was playing with a semi-automatic weapon. I thought it was an AK-47. I remember being told: “Run, run, run!” It was an endless race…
Jonathan Dube
Jonathan Dubé then has blood on his face and arms. Probably the blood of Denis Blanchette, his “great friend” who showed him the trade. The single shot fired by Richard Henry Bain mowed down Denis Blanchette and seriously injured Dave Courage. His firearm luckily jammed, averting carnage.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Jonathan Dubé discusses with his lawyers, Mr.and Justin Wee and M.and Virginie Dufresne-Lemire, at the Montreal courthouse.
Despite the evidence, Jonathan Dubé desperately tries to call Denis Blanchette. “Two seconds before, we were talking…”, he blurts out. Despite a sleepless night, he decides to dismantle the Metropolis stage the next day. “I don’t want to think about it, stay strong, not let anything show,” he sums up.
Everything falls apart in the following weeks. Jonathan Dubé begins to take ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, intravenously. “You fall into a coma straight away,” he says. He then turns to heroin. Then, six months after the attack, he was hospitalized for kidney problems and pneumonia. A real ordeal. He remains at least two months in the hospital and is close to death. “I had to learn to walk again,” he says.
“I think of Dennis”
“Every day, every hour, every minute”, the attack occupied his thoughts. “I am thinking of Denis, of his daughter who no longer has a father. I think about the end of my life, ”he confides.
To start his life over, he moved to France to work, but ended up wandering for months in Eastern Europe as an “undocumented person”, stunned by alcohol. When he returned to Quebec in 2015, he used heroin every day and did not work. He’s at the bottom of the barrel.
Nevertheless, Jonathan Dubé hides his misfortunes from those close to him. “I have no right to be weak. I can’t be weak. I was a pillar in my entourage,” he explains.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Richard Henry Bain upon his arrival at the Montreal Courthouse in 2012
Annoyed by the postponement of the criminal trial of Richard Henry Bain, Jonathan Dubé wrote to the authorities and threatened to alert the media. The main investigator of the Sûreté du Québec summons him not to talk about it.
It scared me. It nailed my ass. I felt like he was trying to smother it.
Jonathan Dube
After having been refused compensation for victims of criminal acts (IVAC), he obtained the support, for his request for review, of Mr.and Dennis Galiatsatos, then Crown prosecutor in Bain’s criminal trial, and now a judge at the Court of Quebec. This one evokes in a letter in 2015 the “significant sequelae at the psychological level” of Jonathan Dubé.
Today, Jonathan Dubé has overcome his drug abuse problems. But his sleepless nights remain.
Why is he asking for $125,000? “It’s nothing, $125,000! I lost 10 years, I lost my youth in my prime! I am reclusive, I have lost my friendships. I have more life. Going to the grocery store scares me,” he exclaims.
The trial continues Thursday before Judge Philippe Bélanger. Mare Virginie Dufresne-Lemire and Justin Wee represent the plaintiffs.