FREDERIC SERRE
The 1019 Report

A young St. Lazare man who last Wednesday pleaded guilty to driving drunk and causing a crash in 2021 that killed his passenger – the stepson of Soulanges MNA Maryline Picard – will return to court next month to be sentenced.

Julien Ségaux, 21, appeared at the Montreal courthouse before a Quebec Court judge, where he admitted to being drunk and driving too fast in the early hours of Dec. 18, 2021, before losing control of his Honda Civic on southbound Sources Blvd. in Pointe Claire. The vehicle toppled over the overpass above Highway 20 and landed on Cardinal Ave. While the crash left Ségaux critically injured, his friend, Noah Leewis Mercier, Picard’s stepson, who was days away from turning 17, was killed.

The court was told that on the night of the crash, Picard’s stepson and Ségaux played video games and drank beers at Ségaux’s family residence in St. Lazare. In the early morning hours, the pair left the house in Ségaux’s mother’s Honda.

At 4 a.m. a motorist on his way to the airport in Dorval reported seeing a car travelling at a high rate of speed on southbound Sources Blvd. Moments later, the Honda crashed.

By the time police and firefighters reached the scene, Mercier was trapped inside the wreckage, while Ségaux was thrown from the vehicle. Both were taken to hospital, where Mercier was declared dead. Ségaux spent several days in a coma and told the court that he has no memory of the accident.  He suffered severe craniocerebral trauma, leaving him with significant and permanent cognitive after-effects.

Almost a year after the accident, Picard tragically lost another stepson, when Eliot Mercier, 19, was run over and killed by a truck in Montreal’s Sud-Ouest borough. Police said Mercier was struck by a pickup truck while lying on the road early last Nov. 1. He was rushed to hospital, but was declared dead.