We wake up with a start, perhaps because of the chirping of the children, and we tell ourselves that nothing serious can happen. Not on a Wednesday morning in February, in Laval.
Junior sniffles a little. Not enough to take time off. We hesitate two minutes, for form, then we say no, too bad, we go to daycare. We hurry. We jump in the shower, we make lunches. It’s rolling, like every Wednesday morning in February, in Laval.
At daycare, Junior clings to our necks. As per usual. He replays the scene. Always the same. “No, mom, don’t let me…” He cries hotly. We get rid of its grip. We don’t let anything show, but our hearts are upside down. As per usual.
We tell ourselves that, in any case, nothing serious can happen.
We go to the office, convincing ourselves very strongly that Junior has already forgotten his pain, that he is already having fun with his friends and his golden educators. He daubs himself in water-based paint. Or he does a DIY. In any case, he is well, in this cozy cocoon. We tell ourselves that we are lucky, all the same, to have had a place in this beautiful daycare. That Junior is safe. That he is happy.
Despite everything, we look forward to the end of the day. At that moment when, when he sees us, his eyes will light up – and he will rush into our arms to give us a big, big hug. As per usual.
And then everything changes. We haven’t even arrived at the office when the cell phone rings. “Come to daycare!” Something serious is happening! »
It shouldn’t have happened. A driver who hits the Ste-Rose Educational Daycare in Laval, deliberately. Knowing he was going to kill children, toddlers, babies. It’s so cruel that we lose our words.
One can imagine the atrocious nightmare of the parents. They rush to the scene, in shock. There are police cars, ambulances. And the bus, embedded in the nursery. They hear on the radio that children were trapped under the bus. Theirs ? They do not know anything.
People are crying, screaming, panicking. Journalists hold out their microphones to anyone who crosses their path. A helicopter flies over the scene. It’s chaos.
We learn later that eight children were transported by ambulance in critical condition. Two died.
The police have erected a security perimeter around the daycare, this safe space for the most precious thing parents have in the world.
It is now a crime scene.
It was no accident.
“We hit him to control him, we put him on the ground. He was in another world, downright, ”said Hamdi Benchaabane, a neighbor who held the driver on the ground until the police arrived.
There will no doubt be some who will say that he is a terrorist. It is defensible, insofar as he purposely ran into a crowded daycare center, to inflict terror. What he did was a deliberate act.
Finally, deliberate… This is where it gets complicated. This driver was obviously in crisis. He was hysterical. He was naked. Completely naked. It took four men to subdue him…
In other words, it may have been a deliberate act, but this man was not in complete control of his head. That in no way excuses the horror, of course.
But we need to do more, and better, to prevent it from happening again. Because such a tragedy is not the first nor the last to occur. “Unfortunately, Laval has been the scene of several tragedies in recent months,” recalls the mayor of Laval, Stéphane Boyer, in an interview with The Press.
Mental health, he adds, is “an issue that needs to be taken seriously. […] It’s very complex, what is happening, but it is clear that many families feel under pressure and that unfortunately, there are human tragedies that are experienced.
We must invest more in prevention, pleads the mayor with good reason. Of course, we can never control everything. We will escape again. But the idea is to escape as little as possible. Too many people do not have access to psychological care worthy of the name in Quebec. It’s dangerous. For them first.
But also, sometimes, for others.
It’s hard to imagine what the children went through. And their educators. And the parents who rushed there in a panic. And the police, the paramedics. And the doctors, the nurses who did everything to save children, but who lost them.
All of these people will need time and care to recover. “Psychosocial support is dispatched to the scene for the victims, their relatives and for the staff”, assured on Twitter the Minister of Health, Christian Dubé.
It’s good. But if the driver himself had received adequate psychosocial support, maybe – I say maybe – we wouldn’t be here.
Maybe all the moms and dads in Laval would have been entitled to their big hug, at the end of this day when nothing serious should have happened.