Sixteen months after the murder of 15-year-old Meriem Boundaoui, a crime that sparked public outrage, investigators from the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) arrested a first suspect on Monday morning, confirmed springs to The Press.
Posted at 12:58 p.m.
The 26-year-old man was already detained for another crime and was apprehended at the Rivière-des-Prairies detention center.
He will be charged with the first degree murder of Meriem Boundaoui on Monday afternoon at the Montreal courthouse.
According to our information, the suspect would have pleaded guilty a few days ago to counts of unauthorized possession of a firearm and breach of prescription in another file.
His sentence is to be handed down later.
An innocent victim
Meriem Boundaoui, originally from Algeria, who was in Montreal to study and who lived with her sister in La Prairie, was shot dead on February 7, 2021. She was due to be 16 the following month.
She was with a friend, passenger in a car immobilized in the parking lot of a bakery on rue Jean-Talon, in the Petit Maghreb, in the borough of Saint-Léonard, when the crime occurred.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Three projectiles passed through the window of the car in which Meriem Boundaoui was riding before hitting the 15-year-old girl in the head.
According to our information, the young man who accompanied the teenager was talking with other young people when a car with two individuals on board passed near the group standing near the vehicle, and opened fire in its direction.
One of the youths standing near the vehicle was injured, but projectiles hit the teenage girl who was sitting in the car in the head and died instantly.
Immediately after this crime, which shocked the public, the SPVM’s major crime investigators launched a major investigation during which they spared no expense. This investigation is still ongoing, by the way.
Sources say the man arrested this morning drove the vehicle used in the murder. This vehicle, in which we would have tried to erase traces of the crime, would have been found by the investigators.
Conflict between two groups
According to our information, an argument between two groups, which occurred following a theft committed outside Quebec, and a conflict between two families over a parking issue were the cause of the crime.
After the murder, relatives of the victim said the suspects were known in the area.
A year after the tragedy, last February, relatives and friends of Meriem Boundaoui’s family commemorated her death by saying they hoped that justice would be done.
“It was a long investigation, the investigators worked very hard to gather the evidence. Meriem Boundaoui had nothing to do with any of that. He was an innocent victim of a crime that should never have been committed. I’m very happy,” he told The Press former SPVM chief Sylvain Caron, who was still in office when the investigation was launched.
SPVM major crime investigators are also determined to elucidate the murder of another teenager last year, that of Thomas Trudel, committed in an alley in the north of the city in November.
According to our information, the main hypothesis favored by the police for this crime would always be the “ scoring that is to say that the suspects would have chosen a victim at random, on the territory of an opposing group, to send a message.
To reach Daniel Renaud, dial 514 285-7000, ext. 4918, write to [email protected] or write to the postal address of The Press.