ST-HUBERT – When you drive past the victim’s home in St-Hubert, the photograph is hard to miss.
Inside the family car, hanging down from the rear-view mirror, you notice a picture of 5-year-old Nicolas Thorne-Belance.
The child was killed last February in a car crash at an intersection along Gaetan-Boucher Boulevard.
The boy was riding in a vehicle that was struck by a speeding car – driven by an SQ police officer.
“It still hurts nine months later,” family friend Isabelle Sigwalt told Global News.
In recent days, Sigwalt and her daughter Priscilla have been feeling dissatisfaction.
The Crown Prosecutor’s Office decided not to file charges against the police officer.
“I sincerely hope they have a very good reason why he’s not being charged,” said 19-year-old Priscilla Fernandez.
Authorities met with the boy’s family Friday morning to give an explanation.
It seems the meeting was only organized due to intense media pressure.
PQ Justice Critic Alexandre Cloutier called it a “lack of transparency”.
He’s asking for an independent inquiry.
“They lost their son and they had to fight with the system to find out what happened,” said Cloutier.
“I mean it doesn’t make any sense at all.”
Late Friday afternoon, spokesperson Rene Verret from the Crown Prosecutor’s Office addressed the media.
He suggested the boy’s father, who was driving the car, is partly to blame for the crash.
“He decided to take a chance and cross anyway, he decided to take a risk,” says Verret.
According to reports, the police officer’s car was driving at more than 120 kilometres an hour.
The accident took place in a neighbourhood where the speed limit is 50 kilometres an hour.
The officer in question was not responding to an emergency call.
He was actually an investigator with the UPAC anti-corruption squad, and at the time of the incident, he was allegedly tailing the car belonging to a former member of Quebec’s Liberal Party.
“If I would have done that, I would be in jail,” says Isabelle Sigwalt.
That’s what many people close to the young victim are saying these days – that the police officer got away with a crime.
Comments