One of the three accused linked to the discovery of human remains in Quebec, François Bouchard, was charged Friday with first degree murder. The two other people involved in this sordid affair will face a charge of accessory after the fact.
In a court document made public on Friday, we can read that Mr. Bouchard, aged 31, is suspected of having caused the death of Santiago Gaona “between September 8 and 16” in the municipality of Contrecœur, in east of Montreal. It is in this place, where the accused is from, that the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) had estimated from the start that the murder would have occurred.
Bouchard’s house had been the subject of a long search by the Forensic Identification Service and the Laboratory of Judicial Sciences and Legal Medicine.
The body of Santiago Gaona, originally from Colombia and aged in his mid-twenties, was then brought to the L’Ancienne-Lorette region, in Quebec, to ultimately be abandoned there on the land of a pruner, ABC de l’Arbre, on Notre-Dame Avenue.
PHOTO FROM FACEBOOK
Santiago Gaona
In shock, the management of the company quickly assured that it had no link to the murder. According to our information, the body was slashed using industrial equipment that was on site, before being burned. The police also seized an industrial pruner.
Linked to street gangs?
As for the two other accused, both from Montreal, Jean-Philippe Lamontagne, 44 years old, and Cassandra Major, 31 years old, they will also face charges of complicity after the fact for their alleged involvement in the transport of the body .
The three accused were already facing a charge of indignity to a corpse, which was filed in the hours following their arrest on September 18 in Kahnawake. They appeared Friday morning at the Quebec courthouse and are expected to return to court on November 24.
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Francois Bouchard
Unless the Superior Court makes a contrary request, the co-defendants should remain detained pending further legal proceedings. MM. Bouchard and Lamontagne are detained in Quebec, while Cassandra Major is at the Leclerc Detention Center in Laval.
The Press had previously confirmed with police sources that this murder appears to be linked to organized crime. François Bouchard would indeed have been linked to a street gang in the Montreal region. According to The Quebec Journal, it could be the Flame Head Boys (FHB), a gang from the North Shore of Montreal. However, this information has not been confirmed by the Sûreté du Québec.
One thing is certain: Mr. Bouchard has already had problems with the law in the past. For example, he has a recent history of assault causing harm, drugs, weapons possession and break and enter.
As for the victim, Santiago Gaona, several testimonies have been reported since his identity was released in recent days. Presenting himself as a musician from Colombia and aged 26, Mr. Gaona arrived in Quebec a few years ago with his family. He would have been struggling with consumption problems, according to what relatives said.
Quebec remains “a safe city”
Even if the murder did not take place in Quebec, this affair marked a new episode of violence for the capital, where the body was found. In the Limoilou sector, three homicides occurring in less than a month had particularly shocked the community in the preceding weeks. The capital “is a safe city,” said the mayor of Quebec, Bruno Marchand. By calling on Quebec to meet its demands regarding the increase in police force and social workers, Mr. Marchand nevertheless judged that “it is not because things are going relatively well that we must ensure that we wait that things are going badly to intervene.”