The accused in the drama of Amqui which claimed the lives of two people, Steeve Gagnon, is a native of the neighboring village of Saint-Léon-le-Grand, nearly 10 km from the place where he committed the irreparable.
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The mayor of this municipality knows the suspect well. Jean-Côme Lévesque also saw the one who was going to grab a dozen innocent passers-by shortly before he took action.
“I was going to do some shopping in town and I went through rue Desbiens, he told LCN on Wednesday. I saw Steve getting into his vehicle. Steve, I know him very well. I said to myself that he was going to take a “wrinkle”, as we say in good Quebecers.
The one he describes as a young trucker would have been off work recently and he seemed to have regressed psychologically.
“His state of health has really deteriorated for him to make such a gesture, he fears. It’s a fraction of a second it takes for a guy out of balance to completely lose the real notion of common sense.
Shortly after seeing Gagnon in front of his residence, Mayor Lévesque drove down Saint-Benoit Boulevard West, where he saw the horror. It was by bypassing the first procession of police vehicles that he understood the magnitude of the scene.
“I thought to myself that there was an accident and that someone injured pedestrians. I passed by the vehicle of the Sûreté (of Quebec), then… oh! I see others on the sidewalk. I thought, “My God, Lord!”
A witness to the incident told Mayor Lévesque what he saw and described how the ram truck mowed down people on the sidewalk. It was in the evening that he heard the name of Steeve Gagnon being associated with the crime. It was a shock, since Gagnon was befriended by his son and has known the 38-year-old for a long time.
“He stopped seeing my boy from time to time. He came to our warehouse last summer, where we store our firewood.”
Recall that Gagnon was charged Tuesday with dangerous driving causing the death of Gérald Charest, 65, and Jean Lafrenière, 73.
