Violent events | Paramedics in the front row

At Urgences-santé, an ambulance cooperative that serves Montreal and Laval, the number of interventions for gunshot or stab wounds has increased slightly over the past five years. And the victims are getting younger and younger. The Press went into the heat of the action.

Ariane Lacoursiere
The Press

Alain Roberge
The Press

The screen in Johan Guenver’s vehicle flashes: “Code 27”. An event involving “trauma by bullet or stab” has just occurred in Montreal North. Two men are involved. The supervising paramedic turns on the flashing light and siren and quickly heads to the scene.

As Johan Guenver speeds through traffic to reach Albert-Hudon Boulevard, a little more information is displayed on the vehicle’s dashboard. One of the injured left the scene. A victim is still at the scene and has an arm injury. Then, a few seconds later, we learn that the police have intercepted the fugitive and that the latter is injured in the neck.

When Johan Genver arrives on the scene, two paramedics are already there. They are squatting next to a first individual who has a major laceration in the arm and is bleeding profusely.

Johan Guenver heads a little further towards the second man. Wearing a cap, black pants and a bloodstained gray hoodie, the latter is seated on the ground and handcuffed behind his back. He has a sore on his neck. The hole is so deep you can see right down to his tongue. Mr. Guenver lifts the sweater of the man, who is surprisingly calm. The paramedic is looking for other injuries. But there is nothing. Mr. Guenver undertakes to make a bandage. He is quickly joined by a colleague from the Tactical Medical Intervention Group (GIMT) who helps him in his maneuvers.

The dressing in place, the two paramedics ask the police to handcuff their patient in front instead of behind.

During the intervention, details of what has just happened come to light. It’s a story of road rage gone wrong. The first man was reportedly injured in the arm by a chisel. The second, stabbed in the neck with a screwdriver.

The event is therefore not linked to those of the day before: on June 8, three shootings occurred in Greater Montreal in less than six hours. Before starting his day, Johan Guenver dreaded a hot evening. But this intervention does not seem to be linked for the moment.

Once the bleeding of the two men stopped, the paramedics of Urgences-santé embarked them in two ambulances and directed them towards the hospital of the Sacred Heart, accompanied by police officers. At the wheel of his supervisor’s car, Johan Guenver will join his colleagues a few minutes later on leaving the hospital to debrief with them. “It’s part of my job as a supervisor. I intervene when I am the first to arrive on a stage. But I also support the teams,” he says. Johan Guenver speaks with paramedics Maggie Kocan and Mélissa Montplaisir. He learns that the condition of the man stabbed in the neck has deteriorated in the ambulance. The bleeding has increased a lot.

A 15 year old victim

A little later, in the parking lot of Notre-Dame Hospital in Montreal, we joined paramedics Paolo Guérin and Gaétan Durocher. Both men have been members of GIMT for several years. Composed of paramedics specialized in intervening in difficult situations, the GIMT is called on all cases of “code 27” in Montreal and Laval. “I don’t know if it’s just an impression, but it seems to me that there are more and more calls for violence. I include in this cases where psychiatry comes into play,” says Paolo Guérin. “It is clear that it is increasing,” confirms his partner, Gaétan Durocher.

According to data from Urgences-santé, it indeed seems that “code 27” cases have been on the rise since 2016. For the first five months of 2022, there are 153 of these interventions. The highest number in seven years, except for 2018, when there were 161 for the same period.

Paramedic for 17 years at Urgences-santé, Johan Guenver also believes that there is a perception that acts of violence are increasing. But above all, what strikes the paramedic is the age of the victims and the attackers. “They are getting younger and younger,” says Mr. Guenver. Before, the gunshot wounds were 30, 40 years old. Now they are 14, 15, 16…”

A few days before the passage of The Press, Mr. Guenver had just had to rescue a 19-year-old, stabbed in an alley adjacent to Crescent Street, downtown. It would be a conflict between people which would have degenerated according to the Service de police de la ville de Montréal (SPVM). One suspect had been arrested, and the second is still wanted.

On May 3, Johan Guenver also intervened at the corner of rue de Louvain and 9^e Avenue in the Saint-Michel district, where a 15-year-old boy was stabbed in the arm while walking to school. Several suspects are in the crosshairs of the authorities in this case, and an investigation is still ongoing.

free attacks

At the Urgences-santé barracks, spokesperson and paramedic Stephane Smith says that on June 4, he had to intervene on a 26-year-old young man who was stabbed in the neck with a knife while walking rue Raymond, in the LaSalle district, around 9:30 p.m. The SPVM speaks of “possibility of serious injuries” for the victim. The suspect fled the scene and is still being sought.

Disturbingly, the SPVM linked this crime to another, which occurred a few days earlier in LaSalle. On May 31, a young man who was leaving a training center and waiting for the bus on Bishop-Power Boulevard was approached by a man who wanted to ask him questions, but who then violently attacked and stabbed him in the upper from the body.

A command post was erected by the SPVM on June 11 in LaSalle to collect testimonies in these cases. A sketch of the suspect has been unveiled.

It seems, in this case, that the crimes affected “innocent victims”, notes the SPVM.

On the evening of June 4, in front of his patient with a knife in his neck, Stephane Smith and his partner had to make a bandage to stabilize the weapon in the wound before bringing him to the hospital. With this type of injury, there is a risk that the victim will lose the use of their legs. “The knife shouldn’t move,” says Stephane Smith. He reassured the victim. It took 45 minutes to do the bandage before transporting the young man to the hospital… and continuing with the next call.