By now, you’ve probably run into someone familar - within one degree of separation - to either the victim or the perpetrator. Last weekend, early Saturday morning to be precise, 26-year-old Thomas Vernis, owner of Santos restaurant in the Old Port, hit François Dumouchel, alias DJ Euterke, and killed him in a hit and run. Euterke means muse in Greek.
Vernis, who is the son of Old River’s founder Edouard Vernis, was arraigned at the Montreal courthouse Monday afternoon on a charge of hit and run causing death. He faces charges in a fatal hit and run case that could land him anywhere from 2 years to life in prison. Some are suspecting that he might get a sentence on the lower end of that range when he appears in court in August. In the meantime, Vernis was released on $5,000 bail, with the condition that he cannot drive a vehicle and must give up his driver’s licence. He is also ordered to stay home between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., unless absolutely required to be at work. Clubs close at 3am in Montreal.
The 36-year-old Francois Dumouchel was struck and killed at the corner of St-Laurent and Villeneuve. Vernis’ SUV hit his scooter, threw Dumouchel several metres. Vernis, meanwhile, kept going with his SUV, dragging the scooter for six blocks. Allegedly, he got out of his SUV on Esplanade and Rachel to get rid of the scooter. If you are familiar with the city, you know that’s a couple of blocks northbound, a couple West. Vernis was arrested hours later in Old Montreal, at Santos.
The cops didn’t bother to give him a breathalizer, because this was way after the fact, and his results would have been tainted; when was he drinking? Before the hit and run, or afterwards, when he emerged at his bar.
Anyway you dice it, this is sad. People don’t wake up thinking: I’m going to plow through someone on a scooter. On the other hand, no one deserves a death like Dumouchel’s either… who allegedly was sent off by his girlfriend/wife as he crossed that fateful street corner where he met his fate.
Vernis’ fate remains to be determined, according to a story in the Montreal Gazette:
Victor Carillo was parking his car on Villeneuve at the time of the accident. In an interview at his home, he stood up from his couch and pointed to the ceiling to show how high the man flew off his scooter before landing on the sidewalk.
“He was bleeding from his head and his ears,” Carillo said.
He said strangers immediately started giving the man mouth-to-mouth and pumping on his chest.
The driver of the SUV almost hit his wife, who was standing on the sidewalk as the vehicle sped off with the scooter underneath, Carillo said. He said she ducked behind their car and recorded the licence plate number of the SUV and gave it to police.
“If you hit a dog, you stop,” Carillo said. “This guy hit someone and didn’t even slow down.”
Montreal criminal lawyer Marc Giroux said the crown could charge the man with manslaughter, but it is unlikely.
“It’s tougher to prove manslaughter than hit and run causing death, for sure,” he said. In order to show manslaughter, the crown would have to prove that the driver was driving fast with the intention to kill someone.
This being the age of social media, the entire episode leaves a trail of sorrow across the Web. A quick search for Dumouchel lands you on his professional profile on LinkedIn, the popular social networking website that connects employees and employers. When he was not DJing, he was helping the Laurentian bank step into the 21st century, apparently.
Closer to his passion, Dumouchel - who went by the DJ Euterke handle - also had his YouTube page. Since his tragic passing, friends and fans have been leaving their condolences and best wishes on his Facebook page.
Vernis on his end is no stranger online, either. Apart from the countless of stories on mainstream media sources since the incident, he conducted an interview talking about his background and his new restaurant. Catch it on Veoh, or the popular French social networking site Daily Motion:
Notice that the comments on Daily Motion have been disabled; the comments are enabled on Veoh, and understandably, unkind to the 26 year old.
This all begs the question: why. Why didn’t Vernis just stop? Was he drinking? Maybe. Who knows. And based on the events that took place, maybe we will never find out. Vernis is slated to appear in court in August… but instead of leaving you on that somber note… let’s sign off on something worthwhile, an impressive and memorable appearance by Dumouchel at the popular Mont-Royal haunt Patro Vys, enjoy.
WTF? First, amazing game… see comments on our sports blog here. But were the fans aware that this is Game 7 of Series 1? See some of the mess on YouTube, below:
Yes, the title of this post is ironic, but upon reading an article in The Gazette, I think Montreal is crazy for considering making squeegee-ing an accepted activity.
Chris Hohaus, 19, stood on the corner of Iberville and Ontario Sts. this afternoon, brandishing his squeegee, waiting for the red traffic light to make his move.
With a certain dexterity he moved from car to car, cleaning their windshields, until the light turned green, for $10 an hour.
But Hohaus’s livelihood is usually at the mercy of his customers’ generosity.
Today, the street youth organization l’Anonyme provided the hourly wage in return for Hohaus’ services to help launch a new awareness campaign aimed at sensitizing people to the notion squeegeeing is a job, not a nuisance.
Joining forces with Le Gang de Rue, a new documentary television show focussed on a group of youth who perform leave a positive mark on the community and hosted by the Quebec actor-singer Dan Bigras, l’Anonyme also wanted to bring attention to the criminalization of squeegeeing in the city.
Although no laws specifically forbid the act, municipal and road safety rules, give police the power to issue tickets for simply approaching a car, sitting on the sidewalk or crossing the street on a red light, said Nicole McNeil, director of l’Anonyme, founded in 1989.
Since 1989? Why don’t we spend some resources trying to get kids off street corners?
“The police give tickets to them for things ordinary people would never get tickets for,” said Genevieve Dorval, 20, a member of Le Gang de Rue, recalling her visit to Montreal youth homeless shelter, Le Refuge des Jeunes.
“They (shelter personnel) emptied bags of tickets for us,” she added, as she handed out information flyers to driver while one of the participating squeegee kids washed his windshield.
Because squeegee kids usually have no permanent address their tickets often get sent to the shelter.
When they don’t pay for the ticket or appear in court to defend themselves, the result can be incarceration when subsequently stopped by police, says Pierre Gaudreau, coordinator with the Reseau d’aide aux personnes seules et itinerantes de Montreal, a network representing 73 community organizations working with the homeless.
Maybe the fear of getting sent to jail would give a dis-incentive to young, able-bodied teenagers from loitering on the streets and dirtying car windshields, no?
It’s in jail where they get exposed to real criminal behaviour, he added.
So let’s regulate squeegeeing and make it legal so that they never end up in jail? Smart. Why not go to the source and avoid the first phase in this decline of an entire generation’s future?
Montreal police don’t keep statistics on how many squeegee kids they arrest per year.
Not enough. Nothing against these kids in particular, but come on, why are we glamorizing this?
Christian Cloutier, commander of the Centre-Sud police station, which includes the area where today’s campaign was launched, said since May they’ve only ticketed people under the road safety laws and not municipal bylaws, which carry a heftier fine. And not all of those people ticketed were squeegee kids.
Police in Centre-Sud however are much “cooler,” says Celia Moreno, a development officer with l’Anonyme.
“Cooler”? We are talking about cops, right? I expect pimps, hookers and drug dealers to be cool. The Police? Not so.
Yet most of the other downtown stations aren’t as lenient, she added.
Hohaus says he’s no stranger to police brutality or their intolerance for homeless youth.
After four years on the streets, he’s lost count of the number of tickets issued to his name.
A fast-talking, intelligent person, who possesses his own brand of eloquence, Hohaus openly admits he’s got dependency problems and that squeegeeing helps feed his addictions.
No word on addressing addiction, let’s make it legal for him to make money off squeegeeing, so he can get his high.
But it’s his way of life and begrudges those squeegee kids he calls “weekend warriors.”
“(What) keeps it going is the fact you got to make it to tomorrow,” he added.
All right, go pick up a history book and find out how Rudy Giulani cleaned up NYC. The first thing he did, he forbid it for anyone (bums, basically) to come up to you while you were in a car, at a stop sign. The rationale was simple, first you go up to cars begging for money, then you carjack someone, then you kill them etc. Let’s stop kids from coming up to you in your car and harassing you (and creating a road hazard…) at the first step people…
A jury Friday found former media tycoon Conrad Black guilty of mail fraud and obstruction of justice, determining that he and three co-defendants defrauded shareholders of Hollinger International and skimmed $60 million from the newspaper conglomerate.
I have no idea how long they will take to render a verdict, let alone what that verdict will be.
All I know is that it must be a very interesting vibe at some of the newspapers around the country, in particular at the Montreal Gazette, where Black was once the owner.
As a multilingual, allophone businessman living in Montreal, I oftentimes blame the Separatist movement for making Montreal take a back seat to Toronto as the economic hub of Canada. Mind you, Montreal’s joie de vivre and artistic prowess might be the flip side to letting Hogtown take the business crown. But the fact remains, I always look at the skyline here, and wonder, what would have been.
Of course, with the supremacy in economy, comes social problems. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, after all.
For the past few years, Toronto’s crime rate has been spiraling out of control. Maybe it’s not the crime rate, but the types of crime. Critics would say that Toronto is really no different than the worst of American cities when it comes to crime.
Maybe. Maybe not.
But last week’s shooting of a 16 year old in a high school - at gunpoint - made one thing clear for me, let Toronto be Canada’s answer to an American city, and god bless the separatists for letting Toronto have that crown.
And seeing how separatists simply don’t have enough kids to ever win a majority, combined with the fact that Canada remains pound for pound the best nation to live in in the world and the influx of immigrants will make a Yes vote an unlikely outcome, maybe Rene Levesque and the PQ’s ultimate legacy won’t be a separate Quebec, but a distinctly safe Montreal.
After seeing the movie on Conrad Black, my interest in the man’s affairs, sordid or otherwise, grew. I’ve been keeping an eye on his trial, here are the latest details.
Former Montreal Canadiens star Guy Lafleur’s 22-year-old son was charged Thursday with sexual assault involving a minor.Mark Lafleur was charged with sexual assault, assault with a weapon, uttering threats and false imprisonment. A bail hearing is scheduled for Monday.
