If the province’s courthouses are overflowing with tragic stories, human tragedies and unscrupulous criminals, occasionally stories emerge of litigants who have found a way to get their feet in trouble themselves. or who facilitated the work of the authorities. A look at these sometimes crazy, sometimes literally discouraging stories that marked the year 2023 in the Quebec region.
Thieves who leave traces
A few days before Christmas 2022, witnesses saw Maxime Duchesne Gadoury and an accomplice leaving a house with several stolen goods.
Neighbors then saw the thieves place the items in a wheeled trash bin to make their escape easier. However, the two wheels of the ferry left behind them very clear traces in the snow, providing the police with a rather easy investigation. The agents only had to follow the tracks to trace the thieves and their loot.
Duchesne Gadoury was sentenced to 18 months in prison for cases of breaking and entering into residential homes and stealing mail from apartment buildings.
He shares his photos of the victim to… the victim!
Alexandre Bradley was sharing a flat with a long-time friend when he photographed the woman, naked, while she slept. The problem? This is because the automatic photo sharing function between the accused’s Google account and that of his victim was activated. The young woman therefore woke up the next day to discover with amazement the photos in her phone and, consequently, the crime that her roommate had committed.
Then, a little later, Bradley took his roommate’s cell phone without her knowledge and transferred several intimate videos of the young woman to himself via the Messenger application. When the latter filed a complaint for the two events and the investigators seized the computer equipment of the accused, they did not find the videos of a sexual nature, but they found in the device a montage of the whole videos placed end to end, lasting 40 minutes.
Alexandre Bradley pleaded guilty and his case is due back in court next March.
A “firecracker lover” gets 18 months in jail
Éric Lachance is categorical: he never wanted to harm anyone, he is only a “firecracker lover”.
In fact, he is so keen that he even modified his drone to successfully shoot explosives from the machine, a “hobby” that the neighbors did not appreciate. The first complaints made to the police reported “explosions in the sky”.
Under police surveillance, Lachance even put on a private “show” for the agents who were monitoring him, setting off “firecrackers” in front of their eyes, the detonation causing “the windows of the unmarked vehicle to vibrate,” the agents mentioned in their report.
In handing down his 18-month detention sentence, Judge Sarah-Julie Chicoine took great care to advise Éric Lachance to “change his hobbies”.
Accused of sexual assault, he increases his case by attacking a journalist
Gabriel Chabot-Gagné was working as a security guard at the Musée de la civilization when he attacked female visitors to the place, committing sexual assaults to which he admitted by pleading guilty. But his case grew heavier when he showed up at the Quebec courthouse for a court appearance.
Screenshot of a video provided by Radio-Canada
Angered at being filmed by a journalist who was installed in one of the areas provided for this purpose, the man in his mid-twenties attacked the Radio-Canada employee by trying to snatch his cell phone. hands. The accused then struck the journalist with the back of his hand.
And as if that wasn’t enough, when he was taken to a meeting cubicle by his lawyer, the individual overturned the table that was there.
These outbursts of anger led to additional charges of assault and mischief being filed.
Anti-sanitary measures, the court imposes a curfew on him
Definition of “immanent justice”, also called poetic justice: situation in which vice is punished in an ironically appropriate way.
This definition applies perfectly to the case of Samuel Doré, an anti-sanitary measures conspirator who vandalized a vaccination clinic in addition to attacking a security agent who had surprised him with an ax.
Samuel Dore
Photo Nicolas Saillant
For his crimes, the man from the Portneuf region was sentenced by the judge to a weekend prison sentence of 90 days, combined with 12 months of house arrest during which he is subject to… a cover -fire. Ironic when we know that measures like the curfew are what pushed him to commit the crime in the first place.
A trip to Ottawa that cost him a year in detention
Vincent Daigle’s lawyer did a good job in managing to negotiate a three-year prison sentence for the man with the Crown. Especially since his file was full with convictions for sexual assault on two escorts, death threats against his own parents and dangerous driving.
Photo courtesy, Sûreté du Québec
But the deal was on one condition, namely to complete three months of therapy before heading to the penitentiary, which was obviously too much to ask of the criminal who pushed himself in the moments following his arrival at the therapy house.
Result of his six-week run which led to his arrest in the Ottawa area? The initial agreement was “enhanced” by 12 months, his sentence increasing from three to four years of detention.
Start your car “on compression” to beat the breathalyzer
Already banned from driving, in addition to having an alcohol ignition interlock, Stéphane Gagné tried to thwart the system after a dinner where he drank a few beers in February 2021.
The repeat drunk driving offender had the good idea of tying his vehicle behind that of a friend to try to “leave on the squeeze” as judge Sandra Rioux recounted during sentencing in March last. The problem is that the police obviously intercepted “the two vehicles connected by a rope which were driving on Boulevard Pierre-Bertrand”.
And the worst part is that Gagné had been arrested less than six months earlier, unconscious at the wheel of his car, under the influence of cocaine and methamphetamine.
Judge Rioux sentenced him to 34 months of detention for these offenses and numerous breaches of orders, deploring that before these events, Stéphane Gagné already had seven records of driving while impaired.
A sovereign citizen in prison
Amoury Lapointe, a self-proclaimed “gentleman of peace,” was sentenced to 60 days in prison in October for obstruction and for refusing to identify himself during an interception on the highway.
Screenshot taken from facebook Amo Aud Vincit
This is because the man is part of the movement of “sovereign citizens”, a group of individuals who refuse to recognize government authority. This is what pushed Lapointe not to stop when an SQ patrol officer intercepted him on the highway at 127 km/h.
Arrested 7 kilometers away, the man gave the police officer a fake ID indicating that he is a “Proud member of the Quebec Constitutional Sheriffs”.
Taken from the Facebook “Amo Aud Vincit”
He then locked himself in his vehicle, claiming that it was the police officer who had obstructed him.