When Montreal police chased and opened fire on a school bus

Police opened fire on a van filled with a dozen young school children on the afternoon of Wednesday 1 October 1975 near the intersection of Pie IX and Ontario, in an incident that left Rouis Sa, 6, dead after a bullet struck him in the head. 
     Police were aiming to hit Denis Martel, 33, who had commandeered the van a block away from the National Bank at 310 Henri Bourassa W.
    Martel, a career criminal with a history of violence, began the incident earlier, when he strolled into the bank with a pistol and a briefcase containing a couple of sticks of dynamite and a detonator.
   Martel was free to walk the streets that day only because he had been let out due to an administrative error on September 9 while waiting for his trial for armed robbery on 20 October.
   Martel made off with $3,600 but cops nearby spotted him exiting.
   Martel dashed away, exchanging gunfire with officer Guy Trilles, who was pursuing Martel on foot while officer Robert Bessette was going after Martel in his police cruiser.
   Martel then spotted a van full of children leaving St. Andre Apotre school at 215 Prieur Street.
   Rouis Sa was sitting with another boy in the front seat to the driver's right. Martel tossed the boy to the floor and put his gun to the head of another boy sitting next to the window.
  Martel then aimed his gun at bus driver Claude Chaput, 26, and ordered him to drive.
  Police gave chase, as Martel ordered the driver to speed through alleyways, red lights and even the wrong way down streets.
  Chaput said that Martel looked crazed and confused and wanted him to head towards the river.
   "I was told that if I had an accident he would kill me on the spot," Chaput later said.
   "Every time the police got too close he would put the gun to my head and tell me to go faster. Whenever we approached a roadblock he ordered me to go around it or if that was impossible to ram the cars."
   The chase lasted about six miles and 15 minutes until officer Gerald Verrault rammed his cruiser  into the van as it emerged from a lane near Ontario Street.
   Police approached the van. Martel shot his 9 mm pistol.

Driver Chaput

   Suddenly all was still.
   Rouis Sa's father Octavio Sa, was a recent immigrant from the Acores in Portugal and was co-owner of a small corner store on Napoloen, in the heart of the Portuguese section of the Plateau.
  He and his wife Lucia Sa, from Acores via Brazil, vowed to also name any other son they might have in the future Rouis to honour their son who died so tragically and senseless that day.
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   One week after the shooting 22 witnesses testified before a special hearing to determine what happened.
   A coroner found powder burns on Martel's right temple, which indicated that the pistol was touching his head when the trigger was pulled.
   He determined that Martel had shot himself dead in the van during the gunfight and the same bullet hit the young boy, killing him.
   A ballistics expert said the bullet was travelling at the speed of 1,333 feet per second and could easily have pierced through both skills as well as two seats in the school bus.
   A pathologist noted that Rouis Sa's skull lacked the traces of lead that would have been present had the fatal bullet been shot by a Montreal police officers .38 special.
  Octavio and Lucia and other family members voiced the opinion that police should have tackled the situation in a different way.
   But one week later Coroner Maurice Lanier sided with police "A lot of people may disagree with me but under the circumstances I think the chase was justified," he said.
   Montreal police director Rene Daigneault wrote a letter of congratulations to the first officer who spotted the robbery.

Octavio and Lucia Sa

   The parents sued the Attorney General, the Montreal police and two officers for a total of $43,000 in damages. They lost their case, although they presumably received about $2,500 given as standard payment to victims of crime in such circumstances.
   The parents, who were living in Ahuntsic at the time of the shooting, were still in town in 1981 but no word on whether they still live in Montreal today, or ever had any other children.
   Opposition MPs grilled Solicitor General Warren Allmand in parliament the day after the shooting.
   Allmand, sometimes characterized as soft-on-crime, said that current laws would have allowed any previous prosecutor to ask a judge to have Martel locked up indefinitely as a habitual criminal.
  Nonetheless Allmand vowed to look into toughening up the law in any an aim to prevent any recurrence of such a tragedy.
**

Hundreds attended Louis Sa's funeral

   The tragic crime that claimed the life of young Rouis Sa was not even the biggest news story from Montreal from 1 October 1975.
   On that same day:
-Eight CIL workers were killed in an explosives blast in Beloil.
- Police were frantically following a report that a California-licensed car with three travelers had left Montreal to attempt to assassinate President Gerald Ford and Emperor Hirohito of Japan.
-Police shot Steve Lenden, 19, dead after he and two others robbed a different north end branch of the National Bank. The boy fled the car after the 16-year old getaway driver ran into a parked car in a shopping center parking lot. Police also injured Adrian Tremblay, 25, in the shooting. Police recovered the $4,613 taken in the robbery.