Today the body of a 55-year-old man was found in an alley at the corner of Cote St. Luc and Decarie. Police still haven't said whether it's a suicide or not.
Here are other grisly deaths on Decarie from 2012.
-May 29: The dismembered body of Lin Jun was found in the garbage outside of Luka Magnotta's apartment building at 5720 Decarie. He was eventually caught and will face murder charges.
-In early June Kesavan Ketheswaran, 26, died after apparently banging his head on a police car. He had been handcuffed and was said to be attempting to fllee. He was detained for a confrontation involving three people at Decarie and Royalmount.
- On Jan. 19, a 22-year-old was killed in the Wendy's / Tim Horton's parking lot at 5180. Jonathan Bijmine Mputu was arrested a few days later near Ottawa.
Here are some deaths on Decarie from past years:
-In Aug. 2010 Pascal Leu, 44, and Yassine Chnaiti, 28, marijuana dealers, were killed inside an apartment at 4800 Decarie. Suspect Samuel Jean-Baptiste, 26, was arrested 14 months later.
-June 4, 2001 in the parking lot of a bowling alley. Two were dead in an apparent murder-suicide in a silver VW Beetle. Rolland Hajj, 29, killed his wife Nicole Abi-Nahed, 25, then himself.
-July 31, 1998, Felix Kouadio, 31, killed Marguerite Boka, 31, his ex-girlfriend, the mother of his seven-year-old child. The two had recently broken up when he moved to Toronto to find work. They were from Ivory Coast. The stabbing took place inside the entrance of a building on Decarie just south of Snowdon. The victim's male friend was critically injured too but still managed to chase the killer in spite of his wounds. Kouadio got away and leaped in front of a metro at the Snowdon station but he survived with serious injuries.
- Christine Martine, 39, allegedly killed her boyfriend by pouring a huge amount of LSD into his Jello-O. She killed Richard Alfredo, 61 who suffered a heart attack and died. She allegedly committed the act (I haven't looked up whether she was convicted or not) at their home in Westport Mass, but she came to Montreal and worked as a waitress here on Decarie where she was arrested in May 1990.
-Oct. 5, 1987: Jean Hervieux, 49, and used-car salesman Jay Gandell, 27 were shot dead at 5330 Decarie. Two others survived shootings. Suspect Carl Richards, 34, of Barclay St. was found murdered in New York City a few weeks later.
-Sept. 1986: Peter Murphy, 30, was charged with second-degree murder in the fatal baseball-bat beating Saturday of his boss, nightclub owner Renald Beaudry, who was found in the refrigerator of the Club 970 on Decarie.
-Dec 18, 1981 Simon Pesis was shot dead at a laundromat at 5743 Decarie.
-May 29: The dismembered body of Lin Jun was found in the garbage outside of Luka Magnotta's apartment building at 5720 Decarie. He was eventually caught and will face murder charges.
-In early June Kesavan Ketheswaran, 26, died after apparently banging his head on a police car. He had been handcuffed and was said to be attempting to fllee. He was detained for a confrontation involving three people at Decarie and Royalmount.
- On Jan. 19, a 22-year-old was killed in the Wendy's / Tim Horton's parking lot at 5180. Jonathan Bijmine Mputu was arrested a few days later near Ottawa.
Here are some deaths on Decarie from past years:
-In Aug. 2010 Pascal Leu, 44, and Yassine Chnaiti, 28, marijuana dealers, were killed inside an apartment at 4800 Decarie. Suspect Samuel Jean-Baptiste, 26, was arrested 14 months later.
-June 4, 2001 in the parking lot of a bowling alley. Two were dead in an apparent murder-suicide in a silver VW Beetle. Rolland Hajj, 29, killed his wife Nicole Abi-Nahed, 25, then himself.
-July 31, 1998, Felix Kouadio, 31, killed Marguerite Boka, 31, his ex-girlfriend, the mother of his seven-year-old child. The two had recently broken up when he moved to Toronto to find work. They were from Ivory Coast. The stabbing took place inside the entrance of a building on Decarie just south of Snowdon. The victim's male friend was critically injured too but still managed to chase the killer in spite of his wounds. Kouadio got away and leaped in front of a metro at the Snowdon station but he survived with serious injuries.
- Christine Martine, 39, allegedly killed her boyfriend by pouring a huge amount of LSD into his Jello-O. She killed Richard Alfredo, 61 who suffered a heart attack and died. She allegedly committed the act (I haven't looked up whether she was convicted or not) at their home in Westport Mass, but she came to Montreal and worked as a waitress here on Decarie where she was arrested in May 1990.
-Oct. 5, 1987: Jean Hervieux, 49, and used-car salesman Jay Gandell, 27 were shot dead at 5330 Decarie. Two others survived shootings. Suspect Carl Richards, 34, of Barclay St. was found murdered in New York City a few weeks later.
-Sept. 1986: Peter Murphy, 30, was charged with second-degree murder in the fatal baseball-bat beating Saturday of his boss, nightclub owner Renald Beaudry, who was found in the refrigerator of the Club 970 on Decarie.
-Dec 18, 1981 Simon Pesis was shot dead at a laundromat at 5743 Decarie.
Laurentian Lanes is on Montee de Liesse...I think you mean Pare Lanes. Jay Gandell, murdered at the Shell gas bar at the corner of Isabella, was the son of Dr. Sender Gendell, one-time head of psychiatry at the Lakeshore General Hospital, instrumental in the hiring of some of the hottest nurses of the day -- Connie Smith, Freya Fischer, Loretta Bourque, and Lesley Aiton (who later married Dr. Michael Spevack)
ReplyDeleteThe one at 4800 Decarie Blvd is the exact opposite end of the same alleyway as last nights body. I remember you posted a while back about some guy wo had his brother killed on that corner too, Coolbrook and Snowdon..
ReplyDeleteYou can see from the new graffiti each morning that even the Police are afraid to pass by the area to see what's going on at night.
Of course I forgot to mention the guy who had his brother killed was about 100 years ago...
ReplyDeleteSince the Decarie Depressway was built, the apartment buildings facing it have basically become "staging areas" for transients, many of whom are from Third World countries with low-income, menial jobs, may have questionable backgrounds, and/or bad living habits such as not properly disposing of their garbage or keeping dogs who bark and howl when left alone. Textbook tenement mentality.
ReplyDeleteDue to the non-stop traffic noise and air pollution, hapless landlords whose property values are rock-bottom cannot find reliable, long-term tenants--certainly not the type who lived there before the highway was built.
I knew someone who for many years actually used to live in one of those apartment buildings on Decarie between Cote St. Luc and Wellsteed (south of Queen Mary).
The landlord managed to enlist tenants by offering them a deal whereby their apartment's Hydro bill was covered by the lease. However, a major downside was that for decades the tenants had no access to Videotron cable TV service. Videotron was in fact forbidden to install their cables there, the excuse being that there was an antenna on the roof to which the tenants could hook up, but which obviously could only offer a very limited channel selection.
Eventually, the landlord gave in and allowed Videotron to hook up to the building, however by then there were news reports of Russian mafia operating on that block, as well as prostitutes and drug dealers as tenants, arsonists, and the usual inconsiderate shift-worker tenants who made noise during the late evening and early morning hours when they were wide awake but of course everyone else was trying to sleep!
Another individual I knew who I believe still lives in another building on the same stretch has had ongoing problems with the Chinese landlord who delays and scrimps on dealing with serious problems such as leaking pipes and basement lockers being broken into.
The solution: the highway should be completed covered over with green space and bike paths on top. Otherwise, crime will only get worse.
One oddity: believe it or not, the Cuban Consulate is located on that block! I suspect that their "logic" for moving there is precisely due to the continuous traffic noise. Whether that makes any significant difference to security or not, perhaps they may feel less threatened by potential eavesdroppers who could presumably point their sensitive, telescopic microphones at their windows. Paranoia does strange things to people. Anyway, what other consulate would move to such a god-awful place?
You are partly right Urban, but not totally. The area is changing and the tenants along with it.
ReplyDeleteI work in a couple of the buildings along that strip and the majority of our new tenants are professionals or students from well to do families. there are still some of the less adjusted immigrants but that is rare, in fact most of them are quite decent people. I of course cannot speak for all the properties on the strip.
As for the Chinese landlord, we may be talking about the same guy, although mine does not provide storage, but his problems are more logistical then intentional, and having been in and out of of these buildings and most of the apartments, conditions have never been better, at least not in the last 40 years. You can just look and see the kind of patch up work that was done by previous landlords compared to the serious repairs and renovations being done now.
Ultimately, you have a building on Decarie and there is only so much you can do because the rents will only ever go so high, but the value of price/sq.ft. is freaking amazing. The real problems are the noise, which is manageable but could be greatly improved, and the graffiti.
If you're ever in the area I could give you a tour of some of these buildings and apartments, you may be pleasantly surprised.
Before the Expressway was built, I used to deliver The Montreal Star to the apartments on the west side of Decarie between Cote St. Luc and Snowdon. Although there were a lot of papers to deliver, the route was short because you would leave behind about 10 papers per building and more at that large one just south of Snowdon. I must agree with Urban Legend. Before the Expressway, most of the tenants had lived in the buildings for ten years and longer. That very quickly changed once the Expressway was opened. The noise was worse in the upper apartments facing the street because the concrete walls of the Expressway focused and amplified the constant din. Then there was the matter of airborne dirt that became a far larger problem with the heavier traffic. On those hot and muggy Montreal summmer days, you couldn't open your windows for the noise and grime.
ReplyDeleteThe easy way to figure out how safe a neighborhood is is to ask "Would this area be safe for a young, single female living on her own?" After all your comments, I'm starting to think that the answer is no. Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteI believe it is perfectly safe, as safe as any other urban street. No reason for anyone to loiter, all residential, at least the portion I am talking about and many single female professionals living around there. In fact the ones I work with seem to be especially popular with the ladies. I would say 3/4 of the units have been taken by girls living alone or deciding for the their husbands/boyfriends.
ReplyDeletePerhaps some of those apartment building owners have been receiving government grants or tax rebates in exchange for making renovations. Hopefully, that is the case, but frankly, I wouldn't make my worst enemy live on that block or anywhere else facing the traffic. Breathing that filth day in day out will surely shorten your life.
ReplyDeleteI forgot to mention before about the fact that one of those buildings burned to the ground several years back. The gap is still there. Who would want to build anything on that spot today? Tearing down most of those buildings would only infuriate the duplex residents on the east side of Coolbrook whose back yards would then have to bear the brunt.
Of course, Montreal isn't the only city which has had a highway rammed right through what were formerly nice neighbourhoods. When the almighty automobile was given priority, Brooklyn, Boston, San Francisco, and others had similar monstrosities but eventually spent the money to repair the damage by demolishing them. The Boston "Big Dig" is the most recent example.
Given Montreal's history of endless "master plans" (collecting dust on library shelves), and mergers which are touted as the solution for all of our urban woes, it may take another 50-100 years before we ever see Decarie covered over.
As for the residents of the duplexes which still exist on the east side of Decarie along Dalou, Saranac, and the rest, no doubt the noise and dust is a big problem for them as well. They may have paid a bargain price for their properties, but I don't envy how difficult it will be to unload them when that day comes--if it ever does.
2 Decarie "express" questions:
ReplyDelete1) What was there before? I'm assuming a long row of houses or some big boulevard a la Dorchester, but anyone's got pictures? Google ain't helping. The closest thing I can find is the comment section on one of your older stories: http://coolopolis.blogspot.ca/2009/12/decarie-was-nothing-criss-cross-highway.html
2) Is it wishful thinking to assume that the New Autoroute 30 will help reduce Decarie congestion/noise/pollution? If plausible, how much of a % on each of these?
I asked that same question a few posts back. So far it seems to be determined that there was a streetcar depot in the area of Queen Mary/Snowdon on Decarie. I too am still very curious to see what Decarie south of Snowdon looked like.
ReplyDeleteUrban, no grants that I am aware of. I live there too. My mother had a House behind on Coolbrook for 20 years which she just sold last year. There is a little more dust than elsewhere in the city but I wouldn't characterize it as unmanageable by any extent.
I don't know which burnt down building you are referring too. There is a new building next to the Cuban Embassy and some new condos right behind that on Coolbrook.
When the expressway was built, Decarie was already so wide north of Queen Mary that little expropriation/demolition had to be done. Just prior to the start of construction (around 1965) a private bus right-of-way was in the middle (between Queen Mary and Garland) - with other traffic using the roads roughly equivalent to today's Decarie "service roads".
ReplyDeleteIf I recall correctly, bus routes 48,51, and 65 used the full length of this right-of-way. (Of course, it was used by streetcars before buses.). Routes 17,129,160, and 161 also terminated at Garland.
The questions regarding what Decarie looked like before and after the excavation and construction of the "Depressway", as well as former shops and businesses, are answered in detail further down this blog, associated with the photograph showing the Nuway Tobacco Shop on the northwest corner of Queen Mary Rd. and Decarie. Scroll down and you will find it.
ReplyDeleteThere was a fire which entirely gutted one of the old apartment buildings between Wellsteed (which is really no more than an access road to the rear of the Post Office) and Cote St. Luc Rd. Last time I looked, the former burned out hulk was cleared away, leaving a gap between the adjacent buildings, but perhaps some wishful thinker has already built something there.
There are many photos of Snowdon Junction as well--some within this blog.