A Quebec Superior Court judge has declared a man not criminally responsible for killing two children and injuring six others when he drove a city bus into a Montreal-area daycare in 2023.
Justice Éric Downs today accepted the joint recommendation of criminal non-responsibility from the Crown and the defence and concluded Pierre Ny St-Amand was unable to discern right from wrong at the time of the crash.
Psychiatrists for the Crown and the defence both concluded it is likely Ny St-Amand was experiencing psychosis when he drove the bus into the daycare in Laval, Que., on Feb. 8, 2023, killing a four-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl.
One psychiatrist testified that 53-year-old Ny St-Amand had untreated post-traumatic stress disorder from his childhood as an orphan in war-torn Cambodia and might have targeted the daycare as a way of “killing his own past.”
Ny St-Amand had been charged with two counts of second-degree murder, as well as assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm in relation to six other children who were injured.
The Crown has indicated it will seek to have Ny St-Amand declared a “high-risk accused,” a designation that would require he face stricter rules around absences from any treatment facility.
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