Laval | A dispute of neighbors degenerates, a gun pointed

What should have been a trivial neighborhood dispute turned into a real police operation, at the beginning of the week in Laval, when a 75-year-old man pointed a gun at his neighbor, threatening him with death. An apartment building even had to be completely evacuated, as a safety measure.

Henri Ouellette-Vezina
The Press

A call was first made to 911 around 11:15 a.m. last Monday regarding a “neighborhood dispute” involving a firearm in the Chomedey neighborhood. The facts occurred on boulevard Lévesque, not far from rue de l’Ermitage, reported the Service de police de Laval (SPL).

The first police officers on the scene were first informed that the armed man would have returned to his home, in the residential building.

Quickly, a large police perimeter was therefore erected around the building, from which all the residents were evacuated. Lévesque Boulevard was also closed to traffic for a few hours, between Promenade des Îles and Samson Boulevard, to let patrol officers do their job. Some of them were seen pointing their guns at the building.

Then, “in all this hubbub, the suspect finally showed up at the limits of our perimeter”, explains agent Erika Landry, spokesperson for the SPL. “The man had finally left his building. He was immediately arrested for death threats, and brandishing a firearm,” she continued.

Released under conditions

In the hours that followed, the septuagenarian was placed in detention, before being met by investigators. He was later released on a promise to appear, and on certain conditions, including not possessing weapons, not initiating any contact with the victim – a 49-year-old man – and keeping the peace.

According to our information, the initial dispute concerned garbage cans or recycling bins. “It’s really a quibble that could have been banal, but which finally took a surprising turn”, illustrates agent Landry.

Photos that have been circulating on social media in recent days show a man in a black sweater and blue shorts, gun drawn, outside an apartment building. Everything indicates that it would be the suspect. On another shot, we see several patrol vehicles parked in front of the residential unit, as well as investigators at work or curious residents.

It also seems certain that the two men involved in this case – the 75-year-old suspect and the 49-year-old victim – were not known to the police.

Rise in gun violence

At the beginning of June, the Laval police revealed in their annual report that they had recorded a sharp increase in crimes against the person last year, just like Montreal. The annual report of the Service de police de Laval (SPL) reports a “peak” of this type of crime last year, up 25% compared to the previous year, a period marked by the pandemic.

Occurrences involving a firearm were also up in 2020 and 2021, compared to 2019. In that year, the SPL recorded 18 firearm discharge episodes, while this number jumped to 40 in 2020. , then to 42 last year.

These shots are mainly fired in public places, and mostly in the Chomedey district, a hot sector where several shootings have still occurred in recent weeks.

With Daniel Renaud, The Press