Quebec City's Halloween Massacre

"This morning I have a feeling of playing again in an old movie, a film that unfolded January 29, 2017."

"It is a hallucinating event, terrifying, an event that is beyond comprehension. We believe it was an isolated act, as was the attack on the mosque [the 2017 rampage leaving six dead at a Quebec City mosque]."

Quebec City Mayor Regis Labeaume

 

"I share the pain of survivors. [This was a] barbaric act."

"We like to think Quebec City is a peaceful, safe place. It is most of the time. Unfortunately, tragedies like this remind us we are not sheltered from these terrible, terrible situations that happened this night."

Deputy premier Genevieve Guilbault

A Quebec City police officer at one of the many crime scenes on Sunday after two people were killed and five others injured in a sword attack. (Jean-Claude Taliana/Radio-Canada)

 

On October 31st, in Quebec City a 56-year old man decided to go out for an evening run. Although it was Halloween evening, the streets were quiet, no costumed boisterous children out as usual, their parents cognizant of COVID-19 and Quebec's high case rate. The man, communications and marketing director for the Musée national des beaux-arts du Quèbec, jogging under a full moon, would never return home. He was set upon, stabbed and he died on the sidewalk of du Trésor Street, across the street from a car parked by a 24-year-old man wearing a medieval  costume, behind Old Quebec's Anglican Cathedral.

 

Police say the assailant left his four-door Saturn with the engine running near Quebec City's landmark Château Frontenac. (Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press)

Carl Girouard had left his home in Sainte-Thérèse, Quebec, on Saturday afternoon to drive his black, four-door Saturn the approximately 270 kilometres to Quebec City. In Sainte-Therese he may have been an ordinary citizen; in Quebec City he became a mysterious mass murderer. He set out to kill more than merely the first person he would come across that night. In short order he attacked and injured someone else in front of a Christmas decor shop, then a couple on L'escalier Frontenac. A passerby ran to their aid, finding them with serious wounds and called 911. It was just about twenty minutes after ten. 

 

Less than ten minutes later police receive their first call alerting them to the stalking presence of a man armed with a Japanese sword, attacking people. Some ten minutes or so later, Suzanne Clermont, 61, a hairdresser, is the next person to be attacked as she steps outside her home in Quebec's old quarter to enjoy a pre-bedtime cigarette. Marie-France Rioux, Suzanne Clermont's neighbour, an emergency room doctor, runs out to help, wielding a baseball bat. She delivers aid as best she can, but her neighbour's injuries are too severe and she dies. 

 

An hour later, police issue an alert to residents to remain within their homes. "According to our preliminary information, the suspect is dressed in medieval clothes," the police tweet observed. Then a second tweet: "Avoid the National Assembly area. The suspect is still not found. For citizens of the entire city: You are asked to stay inside." There is the Québec en Alerte, a program that sounds out a warning message on platforms like radio, television and mobile devices. but only the provincial Sûreté du Québec has the training to use the service; not Quebec City police services.

 

Police cars block Saint-Louis Street near the Quebec City's Château Frontenac on Halloween night. (Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press)

Reportedly, two and a half hours after the assailant began his murder spree, he was struck with hypothermia, and his activity came to a halt. A port officer who was on patrol at the Old Port of Quebec sees the man and believes him to be the suspect police are looking for, and telephones them. Girouard is arrested about a kilometre distant from where he had left his car still running. He is taken to hospital to be treated for hypothermia. Five other people whom he wounded are also in hospital.

Soon afterward, Police officers carry out a search of the assailant's home in Sainte-Thérèse, an off-island suburb north of Montreal. Quebec City is in shock, its residents in disbelief. No motivation for the attack appears to present itself. Simply a man who decided to drive to Quebec City on Halloween for the express purpose of selecting victims at random for the purpose of ending their lives, viciously, without reason. Other than that he had decreed people would die, because he willed it so, at his hands.

"Last night we were thrust into a night of horror. Everything indicates he chose his victims at random. He approached the victims striking them with his sword."

"I think we can conclude it was planned. Someone who is wearing a disguise, is carrying a sword and chooses his victims at random. I think this was planned."

Quebec City Police chief Robert Pigeon

Police in full tactical gear were seen entering a home in Sainte-Thérèse, Que., a town located north of Montreal. (Mathieu Wagner/Radio-Canada)

 

Carl Girouard has no criminal past, but he does have a  history of mental health issues. The Quebec flag on the main tower of the National Assembly was lowered to half-staff on Sunday. Nearby residents left flowers at Suzanne Clermont's front door. On Saturday night, Girouard was seen crouching by a bush, suffering from hypothermia, which was when the security guard patrolling the area saw and identified him. Girouard has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and five counts of attempted murder.