The death of Thomas Trudel, 16, a seemingly uneventful student at the Montreal school Joseph-François-Perrault, still shook the community a few days later. The high school governing board is calling for more effort to prevent the circulation of guns and tackle crime, as police continue their investigation.
During a meeting on Tuesday evening, the council adopted a resolution to this effect addressed to all levels of government and police services. “It’s important to show that we are with the family and that we don’t want any more, news like that. It doesn’t make sense that guns are walking around. It is not our schools, the problem, ”says Patricia Clermont, whose daughter attends school and who took part in the meeting.
She adds that the establishment has been active since Monday to give support to the students. The atmosphere is heavy for them, she reports, but she appreciates the work done by the crisis management team to counter their anxiety.
Sunday evening, the teenager would have been accosted by an individual while he was near his home, at the corner of rue Villeray and 20e Avenue, in the Saint-Michel district. He would then have been shot.
He was not known to the police, according to the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM). His classmates report that he was not involved in drugs or street gangs. “He was not doing anything fishy”, mentions in To have to Maryam, 16, who was not close to him, but who has known him since elementary school.
Pupil of 5e secondary school rubbed shoulders with him in his lessons. “People were still depressed today,” she says, when The duty spoke to her out of school on Tuesday. Students were absent, and the teachers gave them a less heavy workload than usual. Teamwork, usually lively, was silent.
The day before, during tours, students were told that they could leave the classroom at any time if they needed to speak with someone. The Montreal School Services Center sent a support team to offer psychological help to the students. He did not want to give more details to the To have to.
“I find it very, very sad. It affects a lot of people, a lot of parents are afraid, ”adds a student of 4.e secondary.
The investigation continues
“I am without words”, for his part launched Sylvain Caron, director of the SPVM, during a press briefing held late Tuesday afternoon in the company of the mayor of Montreal, Valérie Plante.
He recalled that the operation Centaur was recently established by the Minister of Public Safety to combat gun violence. “Seizures are being made, but we must go further than that still. You have to work with young people, ”he said. He advocates work “upstream” and “at the source”. “Why are we here today, in 2021, with young people who buy weapons at 16, or 15, or 18? There is a particular phenomenon that we can seize weapons, but there will always remain in circulation, ”he said.
No one has been arrested so far, and the director has been stingy on details of the investigation. He asked for the collaboration of the public to find the culprits. “Our investigators have been hard at work since the evening of the event,” he said. The investigation is going very well, there is a lot of work being done, but I don’t want to go into too much detail so as not to interfere with the work of the investigators. “
For her part, Valérie Plante promised to “do everything possible” to pin down those responsible. “We will continue to stand together, community organizations, the SPVM, the City of Montreal so that this type of tragedy does not happen again,” she insisted.
A makeshift memorial was erected on rue Villeray with wreaths of flowers, candles, stuffed animals and letters to young Thomas. Two hockey sticks were placed against the wooden fence. The teenager was an active player.
“I don’t let my daughter go out at night, I’m too worried,” said a mother to the To have to while her daughter, a student at Joseph-François-Perrault school, placed a pink teddy bear on the floor. “It doesn’t make sense what happened. “
A march in memory of Thomas Trudel and the other victims who fell under the bullets will take place on Saturday at noon at François-Perrault Park to denounce the armed violence.
Since the start of the year, 567 guns have been seized by the SPVM in Montreal.