A father from Verchères, in Montérégie, nearly lost his life when he asked a young driver to slow down in a school zone last Friday.
“I was afraid for my life,” the man said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “A couple of minutes ago I was seeing my life flash before my eyes and I was seeing my family crying because I was being shot for something as stupid as telling someone to slow down because there were kids on the street.”
This completely crazy scenario occurred on Friday evening around 7:45 p.m. near the Ludger Duvernay school in a peaceful residential area.
The father was accompanying his six-year-old son on a bike ride when he saw an 18-year-old driver driving at high speed in a 30 km/h zone.
The man, who was out with his son, then signaled him to slow down because there were children in the area. The driver stopped, and there was reportedly a spat between the two men. The aggressive driver eventually left the scene.
A few minutes later, still in the same neighborhood, the 18-year-old driver, his 42-year-old father and other individuals tracked down the victim and his 6-year-old son on Rue Bussières.
This is where things went wrong.
“I didn’t have time to really talk before he started beating me up,” the victim said. “When I was standing up, for a minute or two, they were yelling at me – it went by so fast – and they were hitting me in the face. After that, when I fell to the ground, they made me get on my knees and then in the back that’s when the kid – about two metres away from me with a gun – pointed at me [son arme] in the face.”
It was in this context that the father was made to kneel in the middle of the street, as if the criminals were going to execute him.
“I was scared,” he said, still filled with emotion. “They were starting to panic because there were neighbors who saw the scene. His father was on my right and was yelling at his son to pull me because there were a lot of people who were starting to arrive.”
A warning shot was then fired into the air, as a shell casing was found at the scene by the police.
Arrests of two suspects
Officers from the Richelieu Saint-Laurent Intermunicipal Police Department fortunately arrested the two individuals suspected of committing this attack.
They are said to be Sébastien Vachon, 42, and Machiavelli Vachon, 18. The latter was already known to the police.
The two men remain in custody until their next appearance.
The suspects are charged with threatening to cause death, causing bodily harm, assault, using a firearm in the commission of an assault with a weapon, pointing a firearm and discharging a restricted weapon.
The investigation is continuing and there may be further arrests, police said.
