” He is not feeling right. He’s delirious. He is in psychosis.” The father of the man who stabbed police officer Maureen Breau to death tried to alert the police to the danger of his son, in vain, by calling 911, just a few days before the tragedy.
Serge Brouillard testified Thursday at the inquest of coroner Géhane Kamel who is trying to shed light on the death of Mme Breau and Isaac Brouillard-Lessard.
He said his son, who has had mental health issues for years, had sent threatening and delusional messages to his mother.
He called the 811 psychosocial line, which was supposed to send the police to his 35-year-old son’s house, hoping that they would take him to hospital for treatment.
In a call that was broadcast to the investigation, we hear the 911 dispatcher call Mr. Brouillard back to tell him that the police went to his son’s house in Louiseville but that “everything was correct, everything was fine.”
We hear the father laugh in discouragement. “You don’t understand,” he says. He asks her if she read the messages sent to her mother. When she says no, he lets it slide: “There’s something lost somewhere.”
We hear the father insisting – and insisting again – for an intervention: “for the time that I have been living with the illness, with Isaac, in my opinion, he is not doing well”. He talks to her about delirium, psychosis, and his ex-partner who is afraid.
The 911 agent offers to speak to the police, but ultimately they are unavailable and she hangs up.
Coroner Kamel deplored the lack of empathy of the officer who interacted in this way with a person “in distress”.
“They weren’t doing much”
A few days later, on March 27, 2023, Isaac attacked the police officers who came to arrest him with a knife for threats made this time to his uncle. Two are injured and Maureen Breau will not survive. He is shot dead by two other police officers present on the scene.
Before the coroner, the man recounted how he warned the people responsible for monitoring his son that he was not taking his medication. He was told that the psychiatrists would be informed, that they would keep in touch: “they didn’t do much,” he summarizes.
Isaac’s mother, Sandra Lessard, did not testify, but the coroner was able to listen to a recording of a conversation between her and the police, taking place shortly after her son’s death.
She insists that specialized interventions are needed for people struggling with mental health problems, and who are in psychosis, “to avoid further tragedies”.
Otherwise, it puts people’s lives in danger, she warns.
We need trained people: “I am his mother, and I love him despite everything that has happened. Then I would never have shown up there,” she said in reference to the intervention during which the policewoman lost her life.