Five women experienced a real nightmare last April in downtown Montreal. A predator sexually assaulted them one after the other, in the middle of the street, during the same night. Extremely violent attacks. The young student risks being deported from Canada.
El Mehdi Badi, 21, pleaded guilty a few weeks ago at the Montreal courthouse to around ten counts of sexual assault. Surprisingly, this case was never publicized by the police despite the large number of victims and the modus operandi of the accused.
April 2023. It is after 4 a.m. El Mehdi Badi prowls rue Saint-Urbain, in the Quartier des spectacles. The young man wants to “let off steam” that night because several women have refused to have sex with him. He was also kicked out of a bar at the end of the evening.
The predator targets his first prey: two employees of the bar from which he was expelled. He awkwardly offers poutine to one of them, but is refused. He then tries to kiss the woman on the mouth. When she refuses, he throws her to the ground and attacks her by holding her wrists. Her friend intervenes by inserting her fingers into the eyes of the predator, who flees.
It’s the start of a long night for El Mehdi Badi. A few minutes later, he attacked a woman on Prince-Arthur Street. When the woman pushes away the insistent stranger, the latter responds by punching her several times in the face. He then does a neck hold (chokehold) to his victim and pulls her towards an alley. The woman, however, managed to escape.
Calls to 911
Twenty minutes later, a new victim. El Mehdi Badi targets a woman on her way to work. He follows her for a few streets, then kicks her to make her fall. He then begins to hit her in the face and sexually assault her. The woman screams, but there is no one around. After two minutes, the woman managed to flee to Saint-Urbain. She meets a man in front of the headquarters of the Montreal Police Department who calls 911.
El Mehdi Badi is not finished. Around 5:10 a.m., he surprised a woman from behind and sexually assaulted her on De Maisonneuve Boulevard, a little further east. The woman managed to take refuge at home. She then sees the attacker caressing her private parts in front of the building. He continues to wander outside when she calls 911.
Same modus operandi for his fifth victim, attacked in the street. “You like that, you’re looking for that,” El Mehdi Badi says to her when she tries to push him away. After 15 seconds, the woman fled, but the predator attacked her again. Her head hits the ground so hard that she suffers a concussion. She fears dying.
The police ended up nabbing him the same day, very close to the scene of the last attack. During his interrogation, El Mehdi Badi told the police that he had no memory of the events and asked the victims for forgiveness.
The 21-year-old Moroccan was in the country on a student visa. The school he attended in Quebec was not specified during the hearing. Because of his status, he risks being deported and banned from entering the country for life after serving his prison sentence, Crown prosecutor M.e Annabelle Sheppard
Observations on the sentence are scheduled for next February. The Crown intends to request a penitentiary sentence, therefore at least two years of detention.