police news from laval

Martin C. Barry, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A fire that broke out at a home on Pierre Boucher St. in Laval’s Saint-François district on August 22 will be costing the owners or their insurers more than a half-million dollars to repair the damage.

The Laval Fire Dept. received a distress call about the blaze via 9-1-1 around 7 pm and were on the scene within four minutes.

According to a post placed on the X feed of the Association des Pompiers de Laval (the firemen’s union), flames were visible at the rear of the dwelling upon the firefighters’ arrival, then spread to the roof.

However, the occupants were able to get out safely before the firemen arrived.

In all, 34 firemen and nine fire department units were summoned to the scene. They reported the situation as being under control by nearly 9:30 pm.

Human error was a probable factor, fire investigators concluded in an initial report on the source of the blaze, without providing more detailed information.

They estimated damages to the building (worth $681,000, according to City of Laval property valuation records) at $450,000, while damages to interior furnishings were estimated at $100,000.

Body found on Cité-de-la-Santé Hospital roof in Laval

Laval police are investigating after a body was found on the roof of Cité-de-la-Santé Hospital on the morning of Tuesday August 19.

A call to 9-1-1 was made around 9:35 a.m. after hospital staff discovered a deceased person on the roof of one of the hospital campus’s buildings, according to a spokesperson for the Laval Police Dept.

Authorities confirmed that the person was pronounced dead on the scene. The LPD’s crimes against persons’ squad took charge of the file, in conjunction with the coroner’s office.

According to the police, an investigation will attempt to determine the causes and circumstances of the death. The Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux de Laval declined to issue a statement last week, saying they could not as the incident remained under police investigation.

But in the meantime, they confirmed that there would be no impact on services to Cité de la Santé patients or visitors.

QMI news reported last week that the deceased was a former Cité de la Santé cardiology patient who had been released a few days before, and that the body was found on the roof of the cardiology unit.

Fire heavily damages single-story Fabreville home

A one-story house on Éric Street in Fabreville suffered substantial fire and smoke damage on Monday August 18 after flames that started on an exterior rear balcony spread to the roof of the home.

An initial distress call from the owners was received by 9-1-1 operators around 5:30 am and the occupants were reported to have evacuated about five minutes later.

Although Laval Fire Dept. personnel reported the situation as under control in around 45 minutes, an estimated $100,000 in fire and water damage had been done by then.

House in Duvernay evacuated after reported natural gas leak

A home on Curé Cloutier St. in Laval’s Duvernay district was evacuated as a precaution on the morning of Friday August 22 after excavation machinery accidentally ruptured a natural gas line nearby.

Laval Fire Dept. personnel confirmed the gas leak, after which they accompanied the house’s occupants outside, then summoned Hydro-Québec to neutralize any risk posed by electrical sources.

As a result, there was an electricity blackout on several streets for several hours, although the situation was deemed as being under control before 9:30 am.

Martin C. Barry, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

On Friday August 8, the Laval Police needed the help of several officers as well as the canine squad to try and track down the perpetrator of a car theft near the Sainte-Rose neighbourhood.

Just after 5:30 am, 9-1-1 received a call notifying them that a grey 2024 Lexus had been stolen in nearby Fabreville.

With modern tracking technology being what it is now, it wasn’t long before the LPD were able to locate the vehicle, which was in motion around 6:55 am as it rolled along Autoroute 440 going west near Saint-François.

Although the police made an initial attempt to intercept the vehicle, the driver refused to stop.

Given that the morning rush-hour was coming up, the officers decided not to engage the vehicle in a chase because of the risk to the public.

Two Highland cows get loose in Sainte-Dorothée

A pair of Highland cows that escaped from their owners in Sainte-Dorothée over the weekend hadn’t yet been taken back into captivity as of last Monday morning.

The owners, who had just purchased the livestock, reported to police that the cows, which are longhaired and have prominent horns, escaped from a transport trailer on avenue des Bois.

They were last seen fleeing southward into farm land. The owners, who are from the Quebec City area, said the cows were not bred in Laval, hence they are not familiar with the territory.

The owners warned that, although the animals are not considered dangerous, it would be inadvisable to run after them. They sayd they might respond to offers of apples or carrots to keep them in place until help arrives to recapture them.

String of fires keep Laval’s firefighters busy during vacation period

While many Laval residents may still be in the midst of their annual summer vacation, the city’s firefighters were busy over the past few weeks dealing with fires in households as well as at commercial and industrial locations.

In one of the most recent outbreaks, around 20 minutes after midnight on July 29, some sheds located behind a multi-unit residence on Jubinville St. in Laval’s Pont-Viau sector caught fire and began to spread to the roof of the main building.

The blaze was serious enough to require the firefighters first arriving to call in two more alarms, bringing more LFD personnel to the scene.

For another recent fire, two days earlier on July 27, the LFD were summoned to a one-story mixed-use residential/commercial building on Samson Blvd. at the corner of Côté St. in Chomedey around 4:20 pm.

The building, housing a small bakery business (a familiar landmark for many of those who regularly drive by on the busy artery), appeared to have not sustained major damage, although the firefighters reported seeing smoke after first reaching the scene.

Around 1 am on July 25, a commercial building housing a bank on Montée du Moulin in Laval’s Saint-François district caught fire after flames from a car that had caught fire spread to the building.

The Montreal daily news website La Presse reported that the car caught fire after it rammed the side of the building, possibly after the driver lost control, and that the police later located and questioned the driver.

CTV and other Montreal-area media also reported that the vehicle belonged to an officer from a Montreal-area police force, without specifying which one and whether the officer was at the wheel at the time of the collision.

The firefighters reported on their X feed that they weren’t certain at one point whether the blaze might escalate into something more serious, as there was a risk the flames might spread into the roof of the building.

Another fire in Saint-François, this time on July 21, saw a home on Romain St. damaged heavily when flames spread to a crawl space underneath the roof.

Finally, on July 12, flames from a pair of sheds behind a home on rue des Crocus in Sainte-Dorothée threatened to spread to nearby homes. The LFD didn’t report any serious damage beyond that.

Martin C. Barry, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A former day camp councillor has been sentenced in Laval to two years of home confinement for deceiving a teenager and sexually assaulting two young men while they were intoxicated.

Alexis Plourde-Dinelle had become friends with his victims in their early teens.

The 33-year-old Montrealer pleaded guilty on May 12 at the Laval courthouse to two counts of sexual assault and one of luring.

He worked with young people for years. He was a day camp counselor in Mauricie, and worked at a Maison des jeunes in Quebec’s Estrie region.

At the end of his home confinement sentence, Plourde-Dinelle will be placed on probation for three years, including two years with supervision.

Man accused of father’s premeditated murder in Laval

A young man has been charged with the premeditated murder of his 71-year-old father in Laval, marking the city’s first homicide of the year.

Facing a charge of first-degree murder, 26-year-old Thomas Erik Eyelom appeared in court last week.

First-degree murder carries a mandatory life sentence with no eligibility for parole for 25 years upon conviction.

According to the Laval Police, the body of the 71-year-old was discovered at his residence on Dumouchel Street in Chomedey by a family member.

The LPD initially treated it as a “suspicious death.” The LPD’s Crimes Against Persons Unit took charge of the case to try to clarify the cause and circumstances of death.

A scene analysis, conducted in collaboration with the LPD’s forensic identification squad and the forensic sciences and legal medicine laboratory, as well as information gathered by the LPD’s crimes against persons squad, allowed investigators to determine that the case was murder, said a spokesperson for the LPD.

Family of three homeless after electrical fire in Duvernay

A family of three from Duvernay is temporarily homeless after a fire believed to be caused by a freak electrical accident seriously damaged their home on du Genévrier St. around noon on May 12.

Laval Fire Dept. investigators suspect that high winds around half past noon that day may have damaged aluminum cladding on the house, bringing it into contact with an electrical power line.

Current from the line may have flowed into metal rain gutters outside the house, spreading in and setting off a fire, according to the LFD.

Damage was estimated at $100,000, with an additional $40,000 in damages to interior furnishings.

Driver in deadly 2019 Laval autoroute truck crash gets 10-year sentence

The truck driver found responsible for the August 2019 fiery multi-vehicle pile-up on Autoroute 440 near the A-15 in Laval which killed four people has been sentenced to a decade in prison.

On Aug. 5, 2019, Jagmeet Grewal was driving a transport truck and a 53-foot trailer without a valid license, when he crashed into stopped traffic as he was travelling around 100 km/h, causing a major fire, while trapping some occupants in their cars.

The crash killed Robert Tanguay-Plante, Sylvain Pouliot, Michèle Bernier and Gilles Marsolais, while injuring 15 others.

Surveillance camera images used in a subsequent investigation showed him not holding the steering wheel leading up to the crash.

Grewal’s license was also suspended at the time of the crash, and he was convicted three times for impaired driving in the 1990s

“Innocent victims that were at the wrong place at the wrong time perished and others were severely injured and are still carrying their pain and sufferings,” Superior Court Justice Yanick Laramée wrote in a ruling prior to imposing the sentence.

Laval mall subject of anti-theft operation

MATTHEW DALDALIAN Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Carrefour Laval was at the center of a significant national anti-shoplifting operation last week, as law enforcement and retail security teams joined forces to combat rising retail theft across Canada.

The two-day initiative, conducted on May 15 and 16, was part of a broader campaign led by the Retail Council of Canada (RCC), in collaboration with the Service de police de Laval (SPL) and CF Carrefour Laval. Similar “Blitz” operations were carried out in shopping centers nationwide between May 2 and 19.

Retail theft has become a pressing issue, with Canadian businesses reporting losses exceeding $9 billion in 2024. “Retailers can’t tackle this growing issue alone. It requires both staffing and effective tools,” said Michel Rochette, president of the RCC’s Quebec division.

“Retailers are hit twice: they suffer direct financial losses and risk losing their customers’ trust—not to mention the security concerns for everyone in the store. Retail crime needs to become a true public priority.”

During the operation, Laval police officers were deployed during peak hours to monitor and intervene directly with offenders, working alongside mall security to increase visibility and deter repeat offenses. “Store security is one of our key priorities,” said SPL spokesperson Sgt. Laurent Arsenault.

“Operations like this allow us to act quickly with offenders, reassure the public, and reaffirm our commitment to Laval’s business community. We’re proud to take part in this initiative, which serves as a model for collaboration.”

The SPL’s Azimut unit—a specialized squad trained to intervene in commercial areas— was involved in a similar blitz at Carrefour Laval in December 2024, during which several arrests were made. The RCC emphasized that the campaign isn’t just about enforcement. The initiative also aims to raise public awareness about the real cost of shoplifting.

“Blitz” operations are designed to deliver concentrated results within a short time frame by deploying officers and security staff during strategic hours to focus on high-risk periods and known offenders. Carrefour Laval was selected due to its status as a major commercial hub in Quebec and its history of cooperation with authorities.

The RCC described the center as a “nerve center of retail activity.” The recent operation also comes weeks after an armed robbery at a jewelry store inside Carrefour Laval on March 31. While no injuries were reported and the suspect remains at large, the incident reflects the broader security challenges facing one of Quebec’s busiest malls. A vehicle from the SPL’s Azimut unit, parked outside Carrefour Laval during the two-day anti-theft operation on May 16.