“I yelled at him that I was going to help him. I said to her: don’t worry, my little one…”
Mike Haddad is one of those men who subdued Pierre Ny St-Amand and rescued children trapped under the bus, Wednesday in Laval. Back at the scene of the tragedy on Thursday, he spoke with emotion of the moments he lived the day before and the guilt he feels for not having been able to save a little girl.
He had just taken off his son’s seat belt when he saw the bus pass. “There were the kids looking out the window,” Mr. Haddad said.
“I was telling him [au chauffeur] : back the bus, back the bus. He got up, took off his pants, and that’s when he walked towards me. He couldn’t get out, I opened the door even more, subdued him, did what I had to do,” Haddad said.
He praised the educators who were there on Wednesday. “The real heroes are the educators and the children,” said the man.
To a journalist who asked him how he was doing on Thursday morning, the father replied that it is “not important”. “I think the most important thing is how are the parents whose children have left. Me, I will survive, my children will survive. I hope those in the hospital are doing well. That’s the important thing,” said Mike Haddad, adding, however, that he has in mind “the voice of the little girl, who we couldn’t find”.
André Beaudoin had also just arrived on site to drop off his child when the tragedy happened.
“It was the most intense 15-20 minutes of our lives. It was to get these children out as quickly as possible, ”he told Prime Minister François Legault on Thursday.