One of the happiest surprises in Montreal is the almost-complete disappearance of robbery shoot-ups, which were once quite common in the city, reaching epidemic proportions in the mid-80s and killing many innocent people.
Right up until about 20 years ago corner stores were getting robbed so often that owners would often pack heat under the counter just in case. This was a strategy borne of frustration from the constant victimization of legitimate merchants, but police and the coroner have long urged
merchants not to carry guns.
I recently asked the Depanneur Association of Quebec about the problem of robberies and the rep sounded like he had never even considered it a problem.
Montreal police tell me they don't compile separate statistics, although some old newspaper articles contain such numbers as: Convenience store robberies on the island of Montreal 1983: 639 (total Montreal holdups that year were 5,840, including 394 grocery stores and 287 at pharmacies)1987: 767, 1988: 840, 1989: 999, 1990: 1,118. *The Gazette [Montreal, Que] 24 Mar 1992: A3.
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The adjacent photograph portrays one small local retailer who knew his way around a pistol. Wilfrid Gagnon, seen at his pharmacy on Notre Dame in 1971, was involved in three shootings. He killed two robbers and shot at them a third time in three separate shootouts.
His first kill came on July 27, 1928 at his pharmacy at Villeray and St. Hubert. He gunned down Herve Rousseau of 8190 St. Andre and Ferdinand Hetu of 7579 Casgrain. Gagnon heard robbers sneak into the side door of the pharmacy beneath his home and snuck down, guns blazing..
He moved St. Henry in 1953 and in March 1960 was robbed of $85. It was during a wave of pharmacy robberies, so he was ready when Claude Foisy, 26, a father of two at 3536 Prud'Homme and an accomplice came in two weeks later wielding a starters pistol.
Gagnon, then 60, obeyed their orders to hand over the money even though he says he knew they weren't holding a real gun. But when he got his chance, he shot Foisy dead with a .38 on April 6, 1960 at 7 p.m. An an inquiry absolved him of wrongdoing.
And finally on May 2, 1970 his place was visited by two robbers and emptied his gun in their direction, failing to strike either but both fled. At this point the 70-year-old had been showing off his press clips and claimed that the guys in jail knew of his reputation as a shooter and happily announced to a reporter that he was getting meaner in his old age.
Police said that Gagnon had a gun license and a right to protect his property.
----
So what ever happened to holdups? The standard answer is that there's less money in the till, or that video surveillance has gotten too advanced, or that criminals have turned their attention to cybercrime.
Personally I think these are all factors but that the world is simply getting better. People, I suspect, are less hooked on drugs and instead hooked on the internet (yep, the criminals are all at home reading Coolopolis, that's it - Chimples) and generally have a bit more sense than they once did.
The only really splashy holdup in recent years was the robbery at the Baie D'Urfe SAQ iu October 2010.
Here's a few robbery gunfight stories sprinkled through this city's past, mostly with links.
-In 1931 William Wilksonson and Jack Edgette killed Marcel Dupre by shooting him in the abdomen while robbing his restaurant of $10. Dupre died and the duo plead guilty.
-Also in 1931 James Bradley was shot in a shoot up at a cigar shop on St Antoine after attempting to shoot a cop.
-Nathan Martin, killed bank employee Armand Nadeau in a 1935 $16,000 heist in which a dozen people were eventually arrested.
-In 1942 Granville Pearson was shot dead in a bank robbery by teller L.J. Dubois
-Three gamblers were accidently shot by a machine gun shot during a robbery at an illegal barbotte hall on Cote de Liesse in 1948. The robbers forced everybody to remove their pants. The men were not seriously injured.
-In 1959, a gunman killed a tavern owner in a botched robbery.
-In 1968, robber Pierre Lepage killed Maurice Taurazas, 57, and shot at his dog after robbing $300 from a restaurant at Bouchette and Victoria.
-A big shoot-up downtown in 1971 left bandit Raymond Lynch and an innocent bystander dead outside the Bell Canada building on De La Gauch.
-In February robber 1978 Roy Pidgeon was shot dead in a bank robbery at 5501 Cote des Neiges. One day earlier cops shot brothers Gilles and Jean-Pierre Boileau in another Montreal bank robbery (same article).
-In 1979 Henri Gagnon, a guard at the Caisse Pop was shot dead in a robbery at 13th and Beaubien.
- Stats shows that a person is five times more likely to be robbed in Montreal in 1980 than in Toronto or Calgary.
-In July 1982, Charlotte Doddridge, a depanneur cashier in Mascouche was shot dead in front of her dad by biker thieves in a $320 robbery.
-Depanneur Armand Fortin, 58, shot two knife-wielding robbers to death on Saturday January 21, 1984 at his tiny tabagie Valois on east end Nicolet St. just north of St. Catherine. Daniel Ouellette, 19, and Claude Bouchard, 27 died. Fortin had been robbed just 15 days earlier and this was the second time he had shot at would-be robbers. "It was them or me," he said later.
-Lebanese immigrants Zaal Issaa Zawara and wife Marighi were stabbed to death at their small depanneur at 4572 de Brebeuf. It was their fifth attempted robbery in two years. The thieves got under $200.
- In 1983 cops shot three would-be robbers just before they attempted to pull an armed robbery at The Bay.
-January 1984, Raymond Beauregard, 59, was shot dead at his store at 3811 Ste. Catherine E.
-In mid-April 1985 Raymond Richardson, 31, a father of two, was shot Friday at about 10:30 p.m. in his store at 0710 Charlevoix St. and died in hospital. He had been shot in his head in front of his wife.
- In 1985 Gilbert St Laurent killed dentist Guy Poissant while trying to rob his dental office.
-Kim Il Huan, 41, a father of two who was killed during a robbery attempt at his Lachine depanneur in Nov. 1986.
-In 1986 east end depanneur owner Guy Guilbault, 32, shot Jean Marc Proulx,29, dead with a .357 Magnum. His dep at Logan and de Seve had been robbed several times previously and Proulx offered to return the cash before getting shot. 9In 1986 three store owners in Montreal, Laval and Beauharnois, killed two people and wounded one when they fired on intruders. None of the owners was charged.)
-Nov 28, 1986, Kim Il Huan, 40, a depanneur owner and father of two young children was gunned down and killed during a robbery in his Lachine store.
- January 28 1987, Chai Young Sok was shot and later died of his injuries in a robbery which also saw his wife Chai Chon Ga run after the robber outside their depanneur at 208 Prince Arthur and she too narrowly avoided getting shot as well.
-In March 1988 Normand Ethier, 50, was shot twice in the stomach and killed by a man who entered the depanneur at 550 Cure Labelle Blvd. in the Ste. Rose district of Laval at about 2 a.m. The thief got $50 and was arrested.
-February 1, 1991, a depanneur owner in his 50s was killed in a robbery at his place at Clark and Villeneuve Sts.
-April 10, 1991 a man and a woman tried to rob Marche Robert & Freres at Beaubien and 43rd but the man ended up getting shot in the legs by a store
-April 1991 (yep the same day) Francois Guerin shot the two burglars with a .22 calibre hunting rifle from the balcony of his home above his wife Suzanne Lacerte's depanneur at Dandurand and 9th. He killed Claude Dugas, 29, hauling out $600 in cigarettes and wounded Sylvain Couture, 24, by shooting him between the shoulder blades. Guerin was found not-guilty after saying he was only trying to scare them.
-In December 1991, Mohammed Baidoun was killed at the Mac's store at Pierrefonds and Sources Blvds. by robbers who stole the store's safe. Wesley Kurt Schroepher, 37, was charged with first degree murder.
-In June 1994, a 16-year-old boy was sentenced to three months in juvie for killing Montreal depanneur owner Chul Jea Cho, 54. Seven kids were involved in the Jan 17 robbery on Dominion St. in Little Burgundy.
-In April 1996, Carl Champoux, a night employee a Petro-Canada self- service station and depanneur in L'Assomption, was killed during an armed robbery.Marc St. Onge, 20, and Maxime Charbonneau, 23, were among five charged after.
- In January 1999 Leap Tan, who recently took over running the Depanneur Kim Leap, on Dandurand St. between 8th and 9th Aves., (just a few doors down from the other shooting) from his mother, ended up in critical condition with a bullet in his spine after getting shot in the abdomen by a young man wearing black.He had already been robbed several times before that and was cooperating with the thief.
-Jan. 1999 a depanneur cashier, aged 22, at Pierrefonds and Sources was stabbed in the chest at 2:30 a.m. by two assailants who stole a few packs of smokes. He suffered a perforated lung. A 17-year-old on probation confessed soon after.
-April 1999, the owner of the Ser Tard depannier on Cartier in Chambly was injured when he told someone trying to enter the store that it was closed. It was 10:30 p.m. The man shot through the glass, hurting the owner.
- June 17, 2001, A Montreal police constable shot a suspect who had robbed a depanneur. The suspect had taken two hostages. The suspect survived, and the officer was placed on temporary administrative duty.
-In 2003, a possibly gamechanging development, police charged depanneur owner Harjeet Singh Saini and Singh Valcha with aggravated assault against a burglar. After their St. Hubert store was repeatedly robbed of huge amounts of cigarettes, the two slept in his own store and beat on the 45-year-old thief with an aluminum baseball bat when they caught him trying to get at it again. Many were outraged when the duo were charged in July 2003 but it's unclear what the verdict ultimately was, so possibly they were just freed.
-Sept 27, 2003 a Point St. Charles depanneur clerk was shot trying to wrestle a gun from a robber at 3:20 a.m. at the Depanneur Beau Soir on Charlevoix near Knox. The clerk, behind a protective Plexiglas screen, was seriously wounded in the hands and chest.
-Nov. 2003, A Dollard des Ormeaux depanneur clerk, 56, was shot with a pellet gun by an armed robber on Sunnybrooke Blvd. after refusing to hand over the till. The man was shot four times but his injuries were not life-threatening.
-Oct. 2004: A convenience store owner was beaten at the Depanneur Hui Jun in the Old Longueuil.
-Feb. 2005, Martin Dwyer and Bertin Deverze, 22, were arrested for robbing a Lachine depanneur. The incident was caught on tape and showed the two smashing the 59-year-old female cashier's head on the counter and beating up someone who tried to help.
-A man in his 40s tried to rob a Couche-Tard on Provost near 25th in Lachine in Nov. 2006. He stabbed a clerk, who was in serious condition. Somebody confronted the thief at a nearby triplex and when police came, he stabbed himself repeatedly in the upper body, leaving himself in critical condition.
- Feb. 24, 2008 Montreal police shot and wounded a man in his 20s in a Hochelaga St. depanneur, after he lunged at them with a sharp weapon.
-March 4, 2008, A Pierrefonds store owner saw someone putting on a ski mask outside his depanneur on St. Charles. So he scared him off with a baseball bat.
Right up until about 20 years ago corner stores were getting robbed so often that owners would often pack heat under the counter just in case. This was a strategy borne of frustration from the constant victimization of legitimate merchants, but police and the coroner have long urged merchants not to carry guns.
I recently asked the Depanneur Association of Quebec about the problem of robberies and the rep sounded like he had never even considered it a problem.
Montreal police tell me they don't compile separate statistics, although some old newspaper articles contain such numbers as: Convenience store robberies on the island of Montreal 1983: 639 (total Montreal holdups that year were 5,840, including 394 grocery stores and 287 at pharmacies)1987: 767, 1988: 840, 1989: 999, 1990: 1,118. *The Gazette [Montreal, Que] 24 Mar 1992: A3.
---
The adjacent photograph portrays one small local retailer who knew his way around a pistol. Wilfrid Gagnon, seen at his pharmacy on Notre Dame in 1971, was involved in three shootings. He killed two robbers and shot at them a third time in three separate shootouts.His first kill came on July 27, 1928 at his pharmacy at Villeray and St. Hubert. He gunned down Herve Rousseau of 8190 St. Andre and Ferdinand Hetu of 7579 Casgrain. Gagnon heard robbers sneak into the side door of the pharmacy beneath his home and snuck down, guns blazing..
He moved St. Henry in 1953 and in March 1960 was robbed of $85. It was during a wave of pharmacy robberies, so he was ready when Claude Foisy, 26, a father of two at 3536 Prud'Homme and an accomplice came in two weeks later wielding a starters pistol.
Gagnon, then 60, obeyed their orders to hand over the money even though he says he knew they weren't holding a real gun. But when he got his chance, he shot Foisy dead with a .38 on April 6, 1960 at 7 p.m. An an inquiry absolved him of wrongdoing.
And finally on May 2, 1970 his place was visited by two robbers and emptied his gun in their direction, failing to strike either but both fled. At this point the 70-year-old had been showing off his press clips and claimed that the guys in jail knew of his reputation as a shooter and happily announced to a reporter that he was getting meaner in his old age.
Police said that Gagnon had a gun license and a right to protect his property.
----
So what ever happened to holdups? The standard answer is that there's less money in the till, or that video surveillance has gotten too advanced, or that criminals have turned their attention to cybercrime.
Personally I think these are all factors but that the world is simply getting better. People, I suspect, are less hooked on drugs and instead hooked on the internet (yep, the criminals are all at home reading Coolopolis, that's it - Chimples) and generally have a bit more sense than they once did.
The only really splashy holdup in recent years was the robbery at the Baie D'Urfe SAQ iu October 2010.
Here's a few robbery gunfight stories sprinkled through this city's past, mostly with links.
-In 1931 William Wilksonson and Jack Edgette killed Marcel Dupre by shooting him in the abdomen while robbing his restaurant of $10. Dupre died and the duo plead guilty.
-Also in 1931 James Bradley was shot in a shoot up at a cigar shop on St Antoine after attempting to shoot a cop.
-Nathan Martin, killed bank employee Armand Nadeau in a 1935 $16,000 heist in which a dozen people were eventually arrested.
-In 1942 Granville Pearson was shot dead in a bank robbery by teller L.J. Dubois
-Three gamblers were accidently shot by a machine gun shot during a robbery at an illegal barbotte hall on Cote de Liesse in 1948. The robbers forced everybody to remove their pants. The men were not seriously injured.
-In 1959, a gunman killed a tavern owner in a botched robbery.
-In 1968, robber Pierre Lepage killed Maurice Taurazas, 57, and shot at his dog after robbing $300 from a restaurant at Bouchette and Victoria.
-A big shoot-up downtown in 1971 left bandit Raymond Lynch and an innocent bystander dead outside the Bell Canada building on De La Gauch.
-In February robber 1978 Roy Pidgeon was shot dead in a bank robbery at 5501 Cote des Neiges. One day earlier cops shot brothers Gilles and Jean-Pierre Boileau in another Montreal bank robbery (same article).
-In 1979 Henri Gagnon, a guard at the Caisse Pop was shot dead in a robbery at 13th and Beaubien.
- Stats shows that a person is five times more likely to be robbed in Montreal in 1980 than in Toronto or Calgary.
-In July 1982, Charlotte Doddridge, a depanneur cashier in Mascouche was shot dead in front of her dad by biker thieves in a $320 robbery.
-Depanneur Armand Fortin, 58, shot two knife-wielding robbers to death on Saturday January 21, 1984 at his tiny tabagie Valois on east end Nicolet St. just north of St. Catherine. Daniel Ouellette, 19, and Claude Bouchard, 27 died. Fortin had been robbed just 15 days earlier and this was the second time he had shot at would-be robbers. "It was them or me," he said later.
-Lebanese immigrants Zaal Issaa Zawara and wife Marighi were stabbed to death at their small depanneur at 4572 de Brebeuf. It was their fifth attempted robbery in two years. The thieves got under $200.
- In 1983 cops shot three would-be robbers just before they attempted to pull an armed robbery at The Bay.
-January 1984, Raymond Beauregard, 59, was shot dead at his store at 3811 Ste. Catherine E.
-In mid-April 1985 Raymond Richardson, 31, a father of two, was shot Friday at about 10:30 p.m. in his store at 0710 Charlevoix St. and died in hospital. He had been shot in his head in front of his wife.
- In 1985 Gilbert St Laurent killed dentist Guy Poissant while trying to rob his dental office.
-Kim Il Huan, 41, a father of two who was killed during a robbery attempt at his Lachine depanneur in Nov. 1986.
 |
| Guilbault, Toronto Star photo |
-Nov 28, 1986, Kim Il Huan, 40, a depanneur owner and father of two young children was gunned down and killed during a robbery in his Lachine store.
-In March 1988 Normand Ethier, 50, was shot twice in the stomach and killed by a man who entered the depanneur at 550 Cure Labelle Blvd. in the Ste. Rose district of Laval at about 2 a.m. The thief got $50 and was arrested.
-February 1, 1991, a depanneur owner in his 50s was killed in a robbery at his place at Clark and Villeneuve Sts.
-April 10, 1991 a man and a woman tried to rob Marche Robert & Freres at Beaubien and 43rd but the man ended up getting shot in the legs by a store
-April 1991 (yep the same day) Francois Guerin shot the two burglars with a .22 calibre hunting rifle from the balcony of his home above his wife Suzanne Lacerte's depanneur at Dandurand and 9th. He killed Claude Dugas, 29, hauling out $600 in cigarettes and wounded Sylvain Couture, 24, by shooting him between the shoulder blades. Guerin was found not-guilty after saying he was only trying to scare them.
 |
| Daniel Ouellette, 19, and Claude Bouchard, 27, shot dead trying to rob depanneur |
-In June 1994, a 16-year-old boy was sentenced to three months in juvie for killing Montreal depanneur owner Chul Jea Cho, 54. Seven kids were involved in the Jan 17 robbery on Dominion St. in Little Burgundy.
-In April 1996, Carl Champoux, a night employee a Petro-Canada self- service station and depanneur in L'Assomption, was killed during an armed robbery.Marc St. Onge, 20, and Maxime Charbonneau, 23, were among five charged after.
- In January 1999 Leap Tan, who recently took over running the Depanneur Kim Leap, on Dandurand St. between 8th and 9th Aves., (just a few doors down from the other shooting) from his mother, ended up in critical condition with a bullet in his spine after getting shot in the abdomen by a young man wearing black.He had already been robbed several times before that and was cooperating with the thief.
-Jan. 1999 a depanneur cashier, aged 22, at Pierrefonds and Sources was stabbed in the chest at 2:30 a.m. by two assailants who stole a few packs of smokes. He suffered a perforated lung. A 17-year-old on probation confessed soon after.
-April 1999, the owner of the Ser Tard depannier on Cartier in Chambly was injured when he told someone trying to enter the store that it was closed. It was 10:30 p.m. The man shot through the glass, hurting the owner.
- June 17, 2001, A Montreal police constable shot a suspect who had robbed a depanneur. The suspect had taken two hostages. The suspect survived, and the officer was placed on temporary administrative duty.
 |
| Armand Fortin, 58, killed knife-wielding robbers |
-Sept 27, 2003 a Point St. Charles depanneur clerk was shot trying to wrestle a gun from a robber at 3:20 a.m. at the Depanneur Beau Soir on Charlevoix near Knox. The clerk, behind a protective Plexiglas screen, was seriously wounded in the hands and chest.
-Nov. 2003, A Dollard des Ormeaux depanneur clerk, 56, was shot with a pellet gun by an armed robber on Sunnybrooke Blvd. after refusing to hand over the till. The man was shot four times but his injuries were not life-threatening.
-Oct. 2004: A convenience store owner was beaten at the Depanneur Hui Jun in the Old Longueuil.
-Feb. 2005, Martin Dwyer and Bertin Deverze, 22, were arrested for robbing a Lachine depanneur. The incident was caught on tape and showed the two smashing the 59-year-old female cashier's head on the counter and beating up someone who tried to help.
-A man in his 40s tried to rob a Couche-Tard on Provost near 25th in Lachine in Nov. 2006. He stabbed a clerk, who was in serious condition. Somebody confronted the thief at a nearby triplex and when police came, he stabbed himself repeatedly in the upper body, leaving himself in critical condition.
- Feb. 24, 2008 Montreal police shot and wounded a man in his 20s in a Hochelaga St. depanneur, after he lunged at them with a sharp weapon.
-March 4, 2008, A Pierrefonds store owner saw someone putting on a ski mask outside his depanneur on St. Charles. So he scared him off with a baseball bat.
Another more notorious robbery took place on Sept. 24, 1948 at the Banque Canadienne Nationale at 7785 Notre Dame East, corner St. Just.
ReplyDeleteTraffic constables Nelson Paquin and Paul Duranleau had by chance been driving along Notre Dame when a 17-year old youth waved them down to get their attention to make them aware that two armed men, later identified as career-criminals Douglas Perreault and Donald "the rat" Perreault (unrelated), had just entered the bank and that another man, Noel Cloutier, the apparent driver of the would-be getaway car, was parked nearby.
By coincidence, only moments before, another off-duty police constable by the name of Maurice Demonceau had been standing in a small restaurant on the opposite corner when the restaurant owner pointed out to him the robbers donning masks before they were about to enter the bank. Demonceau ran to his home nearby to retrieve his revolver.
Constables Paquin and Duranleau, guns drawn, attempted to block the bank's front and side doorways but were immediately fired upon and became engaged in a fierce gun battle with the Perrault duo, resulting in the death of both officers.
Cloutier, having seen the aforementioned police officers approaching the bank, fled in his car before the shooting began but was spotted by police, chased at high-speed and captured several blocks away.
Meanwhile, the two Perrault robbers fled the bank and seeing that their accomplice Cloutier had deserted them, took it upon themselves to commandeer another car with which they managed to escape and leave the city.
Following an intense police dragnet, the two Perraults were finally captured in Alberta after they had attempted to break into a gas station. All three criminals were returned to Montreal and later hanged at Bordeaux Jail.
Incidently, that bank branch was subsequently closed and the building demolished. Today only a parking lot remains. The then small restaurant across St. Just is currently a depanneur.
How many people have driven by that parking lot since 1948 never suspecting that a bank had previously been there nor of the crime that had taken the lives of two officers, shocking the city and the nation?
Great story.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of well-known ones that I left off the list, Molly, Santa Claus, the Morel thing, etc.
I was trying to shed light on those which flew under the radar more, in order to demonstrate how these events were really commonplace.
What an awful concept to think that small shopowners and clerks were getting killed so senselessly and so frequently.
Perhaps no other question grips me more these days as that dealing with why we no longer live in quite the same level of brutality. I am really inclined to think the internet has a part to play in it.
For example the radical decline of suicide in Quebec coincides with the rise of the internet, etc. Not a conclusive causality but an interesting fact nonetheless.
Armed holdups may have dropped due the fact that many depanneurs, gas stations, etc., deposit the bulk of their cash in a timer-controlled vault under the counter, rendering it useless to would-be robbers who need to make a fast getaway. Perhaps it has finally sunk in to the minds of evil-intentioned people that holding up some shop for potentially only a few bucks is simply not worth it.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, bank procedures have drastically changed as well over the years with large amounts of cash-on-hand unavailable to sudden hold-up thieves.Tellers now only have access to a limited supply of currency and must walk to a more secure location to retrieve larger amounts and denominations. Nowadays, the crooks are more likely to smash into ATMs overnight or fix scanning devices to collect client information.
Robbing armoured cars used to be quite common as well, but again, procedures and employee background checks are more sophisticated.
On the other hand, it seems that today's youth has become more brazen and antagonistic by bullying and "taxing" their weaker classmates, scrawling graffiti, damaging property, etc., so who knows if they will become the next generation of criminals?
Finally, while some types of crime go down, others go up.
Addendum:
ReplyDeleteForgot to mention the latest "crime of choice": home invasions!
Also see this frightening trend downunder:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/today-tonight/video/
Scroll down to the video clip posted for August 7, 2012..."Dangerous Robbery Gangs - (4:05)".
Has suicide in Quebec really dropped that much? I thought we were still pretty high up there?
ReplyDeleteOverall, I think most stupid violent crimes are committed by young folks with nothing much to do. The Toope murders, this weekend's house vandalism up in the Saguenay...
-Kevin
I'm in my office in the back one day about ten years ago when I hear yelling in front. Grabbed my cane and ran into the store to find an employee punching out a guy while yelling "Pull a knife on me, you sonofabitch? Pull a knife on me?"
ReplyDeleteEmployee Ray really packs a nasty punch- I could swear I heard teeth snapping every time Ray smacked him. Anyways, he still had the knife (although Ray had that arm pinned), and I whacked him with my stick- in the nuts.
Didn't do much good, but he did drop the knife. Tackled him, and we rolled around on the floor a bit while the cashier called 911. Had a hard time holding him down.
I'm not a small guy (220-odd lbs), and this punk was maybe 180, but he was wired and hard to keep down. After an eternity or two the cops came and said to me: "He looks pretty rough. Mind holding him a little while longer while we call for backup?"
Since then I've wondered if Montreal cops get training on
"Why you carry handcuffs"
Two that I remember from the 1980s in the Plateau, which you don't list:
ReplyDeleteThere used to be a tiny dep on Laval south of Duluth. The owners were Portuguese and they had one son, who was doing well at university and sometimes minded the store for them. He was shot dead in a robbery. I think the couple went home to the old country. At any rate the dep was closed and papered over for ages and then finally renovated as residential space.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/37996646559@N01/2736813331/
The Lesbos at Clark and Villeneuve, origin of a few obvious jokes, was owned by a Greek family that had originated on the island. The father was shot dead in a robbery. The couple had a big family so this was no joke in terms of supporting them. Again the space was papered over, and curiously I don't think any other business has ever opened in the space.
Oh, add this link to my comment, please:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/37996646559@N01/2736813331/
Shell gas station at Decarie & Isabella, murder of the son of Dr. Sender Gandell of the Lakeshore General Hospital, 25-30 years ago...trying to recollect if he was working at the station or was a client who was robbed at the pumps...
ReplyDeleteOther notorious local killings were:
ReplyDeleteOn June 25, 1972, 20-year-old laval resident and former security guard Thomas Oszlansky, shot four employees dead at the Ben Ash Delicatessen in the Plaza Cote des Neiges.
On October 28, 1996, Tran Sy Tuan, former employee of the Harvey's Restaurant on Cote des Neiges near Bedford, shot two co-workers dead and threatened another female employee after being foiled in a robbery attempt. He later hanged himself in prison.
In the late '70s early '80's (exact date not as yet determined), a gunman held up the Chalet Barbecue on Decarie Blvd. (it's former location just north of Vezina), and then shot the female cashier dead when she opened the till and its alarm-like sound spooked him. Chalet Barbecue moved to its current loaction on Sherbrooke St. West. soon after.
Researching many such stories is unfortunately often stymied by the relatively poor and incomplete Google newspaper archives. Entire editions and crucial pages are often missing, thus frustrating attempts to learn even crucial details such as court verdicts and sentencing.
Extremely frustrating--and indeed unacceptable--is the Montreal Gazette's apparent refusal to allow the archives of its former "rival" the Montreal Star (the archives of which it apparently owns) to be included in Google's archives! Thus, if pages are missing from a Gazette edition, researchers are unable to cross-reference via the Montreal Star! Worst of all, however, is Google's recent "revamping" of its formerly easy-to-use archival research procedures.
I could be totally wrong, but have a suspicion that "too easy" archival research is tacitly discouraged by certain people in powerful positions who may be afraid that previously-forgotten, specific information and details--particularly related to crime and scandals--could potentially open a "Pandora's Box" if some student or researcher stumbled onto information previously forgotten, innocently overlooked at the time, and even potentially incriminating to those who may have thought they had escaped justice scot-free.
Remember that it was common practice for newspapers to publish the names, addresses, and other personal details of people who were not necessarily considered involved in a crime or scandal at the time or people who may even have even been considered suspects, but later dismissed as such for lack of evidence.
Imagine then for a moment some student deciding to track down such people for the simple purpose of learning further information about who said what, etc.
Anyone who may have indeed been an accomplice to a crime or who may have known more than they were telling--for whatever reason--would obviously not be too keen to have his or her past brought to light.
Watching fascinating TV shows like "48 Hours" and other such cold-case crime documentaries often reveal previously lost vital data, filed away and misplaced, or forgotten but which decades later came back to haunt and even incriminate those who may have truly been guilty or who deliberately "looked the other way" when witnessing a crime. Unfortunately, not every murder is solved nor is every hold-up man or burglar caught.
It's amazing how many innocent people have spent years in prison but who then were later found innocent due to DNA evidence or from the testimony by someone (even often a friend or relative) who knew all along who the perpetrator was but never came forth until their guilty conscience forced them to.
I remember a few of them, from the 80s, and vaguely remember the one on laval anad Duluth....
ReplyDeleteone night when living on St Urbain, I heard a noise in the wee hours of the AM and saw three punks breaking the window of a depanneur on ST Viateur, where I went all the time. They mostly stole cigarettes. Blood was everywhere. I had to give a police report at like 3 am.
As far as I know, Chalet BBQ was always on Sherbrooke St. The one on Decarie was a "branch" which closed in the late 80's or early 90's.
ReplyDeleteGlad our area is very safe. Thanks for the post.
ReplyDelete