(Montreal) Lawyer Yanick Péloquin testified Monday at the coroner’s inquest into the death of Sergeant Maureen Breau on March 27 in Louiseville, Quebec, in the Mauricie region. The coroner is also investigating the death of Isaac Brouillard Lessard, 35, who was shot and killed by police in his apartment building moments after attacking Maureen Breau and seriously injuring another police officer.
Mr. Péloquin said he had a 45-minute exchange of text messages with Brouillard Lessard which ended approximately two hours before the police arrived at his client’s home to arrest him for uttering threats and violating the his probation.
“Nothing in the conversation was very intense that would have led me to believe that he might commit something like the act that we are here for,” he said.
“Otherwise I would have called the relevant authorities. »
Yanick Péloquin, who represented Brouillard Lessard at the Quebec Mental Disorders Examination Commission in 2022, said he gets chills every time he looks at his client’s latest message. However, he did not describe the content of this text message, invoking lawyer professional secrecy.
The lawyer admitted that he felt guilty after learning of the turn of events.
“But I understood later that I couldn’t know that,” he added, specifying that he had never seen signs of delirium, anger or threatening behavior during his interactions with his client.
Events feed
The inquest heard that police visited Brouillard Lessard on March 24, three days before the attack, after his parents reported his troubling behavior. Over a three-day period, Brouillard Lessard made 43 calls and 481 text messages to his mother, most of which were threatening. On March 27, he threatened his uncle, who filed a complaint with the police, leading the police to want to arrest him. Brouillard Lessard’s mother told this uncle that calling the police was a way to get him the treatment he needed.
According to Mr. Péloquin, during another telephone conversation shortly before the murder, his client expressed concerns to him about the possibility that a police officer would come to his home and force him to be hospitalized for treatment. But the lawyer insisted on Monday that his client had no anger towards the police, but feared them because he considered them to be acting on behalf of psychiatrists.
During this conversation, Me Péloquin told Brouillard Lessard to call him if the police ever showed up at his house.
The lawyer testified that he assumed he was probably Brouillard Lessard’s only friend during the last year of his life, noting that his client was quite isolated and didn’t know anyone in Louiseville. He added that Brouillard Lessard was not looking forward to an upcoming hearing in April 2023 before the Mental Disorders Review Board, the body that governs the conditions of release of people accused of a criminal offense and who have were declared not responsible due to mental disorders.
Brouillard Lessard was found not criminally responsible five times for offenses in 2014 and 2018. He also spent a year in a Montreal psychiatric hospital. He had been followed by the commission since 2014. During his previous appearance in January 2022, Brouillard Lessard was insolent and arrogant and believed that the process was predetermined, underlined the lawyer.
In April 2022, Brouillard Lessard received an absolute discharge and two years of probation after attacking an apartment concierge.
Testifying later Monday, Jean-Marc Poirier, a witness representing the Quebec prosecutors’ office, said new guidelines since Sergeant Breau’s attack have helped raise prosecutors’ awareness of the Disorders Review Commission’s decisions. mental. Prosecutors, he said, now attend commission hearings, which was not the case for Brouillard Lessard.
The investigation revealed that Brouillard Lessard was not respecting his release conditions. He used cannabis and did not take his medication.
Jean-Marc Poirier affirmed that when the conditions imposed by the commission are not respected, it is not up to the Crown to lay criminal charges. Instead, it’s up to the hospital supervising the patient to call the police — but Poirier said that rarely happens.