(Laval) Two white balloons were released into the blue sky of Laval, Thursday morning, during a solemn ceremony to mark the first anniversary of the tragedy in a daycare in Sainte-Rose, which caused the death of two children and injured six other toddlers.
Daycare employees and the children’s families gathered in a park near the Garderie Éducative Ste-Rose, where a bus had crashed during the very busy morning period when children were disembarking for the day.
This morning of February 8, 2023, André Beaudoin, father of two children, helped remove children who were under the bus. He said Thursday that seeing the victims’ families helped him gain closure.
Mr. Beaudoin remembers that that morning, he looked up and saw the bus pass in front of him in the daycare parking lot, while he was unbuckling his boy’s seat belt.
Maëva David, aged five, and Jacob Gauthier, aged four, died that morning, while six other children were hospitalized.
The daycare had asked people not to leave flowers or stuffed animals outside the building on Thursday, but rather to make a donation to the hospital foundations which had treated the little victims a year ago: the Cité-de- la-santé in Laval and the Sainte-Justine hospital in Montreal.
The driver of the Société de transport de Laval bus that crashed into the daycare, Pierre Ny St-Amand, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and seven other counts, including attempted murder and assault. serious fact.
The preliminary investigation should begin in March, at the Saint-Jérôme courthouse – due to a question of room availability. Ny St-Amand’s lawyer said he plans to argue that his client did not have the criminal intent to commit first-degree murder.
The accused, aged 52, is still detained at the Philippe-Pinel National Institute of Legal Psychiatry in Montreal. He was found fit to stand trial in February 2023, following a psychological evaluation carried out after his arrest.
A separate assessment was later conducted on the defendant’s mental state at the time of his alleged crimes – whether he should be considered “criminally responsible for his actions.” The report of this evaluation was sealed by the court in April 2023.