A man was shot with several gunshots early in the night, at the corner of Saint-Denis and Bellechasse streets, in the Little Italy area of Montreal. According to our information, the victim is Brandon Jean Célestin, 29 years old, one of Jean-Philippe Célestin’s brothers.
According to the police, Jean-Philippe Célestin was one of the right-hand men of Gregory Woolley, this influential gang leader murdered in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu last November.
Célestin and his group were also strongly represented at Woolley’s funeral last fall.
The police consider Célestin to be a gang leader in the pay of the Sicilian clan of the Montreal mafia and their associates.
One of Célestin’s deputies, Nitchell Lapaix, was murdered in August 2021 and following this assassination, members of Célestin’s group were notified by police that their lives could be in danger.
Still according to the police, Jean-Philippe Célestin controls drug trafficking in certain sectors of Montreal, notably the gay village and the entertainment district.
He was also allegedly involved, at one time at least, in the delivery of drones to prisons.
In December 2017, Jean-Philippe Célestin was sentenced to 69 months of imprisonment — he had 21 months left to serve — after being arrested in an SPVM investigation aimed at dismantling a network of drug traffickers who operated in the center city of Montreal.
Célestin is connected to blue street gangs and in the early 2000s, he was part of a gang called the K-Crew.
The environment in reorganization
Last December, the residence of Jean-Philippe Célestin was searched as part of the major investigation led by the SPVM and the SQ into the revelations of former organized crime hitman Frédérick Silva.
These revelations could allow police to solve 65 murders and attempted murders committed since the mid-1990s.
At least two individuals targeted by this major investigation have been shot and killed in recent months, Gregory Woolley and Samy Tamouro, murdered in a fitness center in Mexico in mid-December.
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Gregory Woolley, in 2013
These murders are not necessarily linked to the current investigation but since the beginning of it, a reorganization seems to be taking place in the world of Montreal organized crime.
Brandon Jean Célestin had an active case of threats, assault and obstruction before the courts dating from 2022.
The murder of Brandon Jean Célestin is already the sixth of the year in Montreal — the fourth by gunshot — while there was only one homicide on the same date in the metropolis last year.
To contact Daniel Renaud, call 514 285-7000, ext. 4918, write to [email protected] or write to the postal address of The Press.