LAVAL — The mother of a four-year-old boy killed when a city bus plowed into a Montreal-area daycare in 2023 told a courtroom on Thursday that the accused has left her family broken and angry.
"He stole our innocent child who only wanted to play with his friends and his sister," said Marie-Christine Cloutier, whose son Jacob died in the Feb. 8, 2023, attack in Laval, Que.
On Tuesday, a Superior Court judge found 53-year-old former bus driver Pierre Ny St-Amand not criminally responsible because of a mental disorder in the deaths of two children and injuries of six others.
"I am so angry with him for dragging us into this whirlwind we didn't choose, for breaking us," Cloutier testified via video link.
On Tuesday, Justice Éric Downs accepted the joint conclusion from the Crown and the defence that Ny St-Amand was unable to discern right from wrong at the time of the fatal crash. Psychiatrists for the Crown and the defence had both concluded Ny St-Amand was likely experiencing psychosis when he drove the bus into the daycare, killing Jacob and a five-year-old girl named Maëva, whose family name is covered by a publication ban at the request of her parents.
In a statement read into the record, Maëva's mother said the loss of her little girl has deeply shaken the family, adding that it has been difficult to explain to her two other children how to live with this trauma. "They can't understand why the person who turned our lives upside down isn't criminally responsible," she wrote.
Maëva's father testified in person and spoke about how his daughter had celebrated her fifth birthday a week before she was killed. He described her as "creative, focused, meticulous, playful."
On one of her final mornings with the family, Maëva asked to be filmed behind a small cake topped with a candle. She closed her eyes and said, "I wish that the whole family remains together," her father told the court. He said she then blew out the candle, opened her eyes and smiled.
"Some wishes are lost," the father said.
He recalled how on the morning of Feb. 8, 2023, a call came that changed everything for his family. Maëva had been seriously hurt when a bus crashed into her daycare. Panicked, he rushed to the hospital, and the look his wife gave him when he arrived confirmed the worst.
"Not an hour goes by when I don't think about this loss, this tragedy," he said, telling the court the pain remains raw and all-encompassing. "My darling, I loved you, I love you, and I will love you forever," he said as those attending the hearing sobbed.
While the statements were read in a courtroom thick with tears and emotion, Ny St-Amand sat impassively in the prisoner's box.
Cloutier said she will never get an answer as to why her child was taken from her. "At 36, we're not supposed to prepare our child's funeral," she said.
Also testifying were several other parents whose children were injured in the attack, as well as witnesses to the carnage and daycare workers who have been unable to return to work since the attack happened more than two years ago.
Prosecutors have said they plan to argue that Ny St-Amand should be declared a high-risk offender, a designation that would impose stricter rules on him and require any decision taken by the provincial mental health tribunal to be confirmed by the Superior Court.
Ny St-Amand's lawyers have announced they will challenge the Crown's position.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 1, 2025.
Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press
