MONTREAL — When Montreal police picked up three men on March 28 for robbing a dépanneur, they struck the mother lode.
Police believe the three are the perpetrators of 24 other holdups dating back to October 2012.
The three men were arrested by police from Station 1 after they allegedly held up a Couche-Tard store on Chemin Ste-Marie in Kirkland, right beside Highway 40.
The call came in Thursday at 11:30 p.m. and en route to the site, police saw a grey Hyundai Accent they had been on the lookout for, based on previous robberies.
The officers boxed the car in and arrested three men inside. They found the men with items that had just been taken from the dépanneur: cigarettes, lottery tickets and cash. The men also had a fake firearm and pepper spray.
Seven police forces have been working on finding the suspects behind the robbery spree, said Sgt. Gino Paré with the Sûreté du Québec.
“There were robberies in Terrebonne, Blainville, Laval, Rigaud, Mascouche, St-Eustache, Vaudreuil-Dorion, Ste-Thérèse, Valleyfield and Les Coteaux, as well as Montreal,” Paré said. “The robberies were always at night, always at dépanneurs, and the descriptions of the men and the car were similar. In some cases the victims were roughed up and at least once, pepper spray was used.”
On Monday, April Fool’s Day, the three faced a judge in St-Jérôme to answer to two charges of robbery, one in Montreal and one in St-Eustache.
Bruno Beaulieu of Montreal, who turned 25 on Monday, Alain Rivest, 26, of Laval, and Stephen McCarthy, 38, also of Laval, will again appear before a judge on Friday to answer 23 more charges of armed robbery.
Comments