From smoke break request to gunfire, courthouse incident escalated swiftly

It started with a request for a smoke break.

An 18-year-old man — now an adult in the eyes of the law, but sentenced Wednesday, Jan. 31, in Quebec's youth court system for a matter that predated his 18th birthday — wanted to step outside for a cigarette before being transferred to jail.

We can't tell you his name or what he'd been convicted of due to the protections afforded him by the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

His request to step outside was denied. The teen had, after all, just been handed a six-month sentence by a judge, and was being held in custody by a special constable inside the small courthouse on rue Notre Dame in Maniwaki, Que.

When a judge orders an offender to serve time, it's the responsibility of courthouse special constables to take custody of the offender and, later, hand them over to correctional officers for transfer to jail.

But before that handover could happen, and for reasons that remain unclear, a scuffle broke out around 1 p.m. ET between the teen and the lone courthouse special constable, a man who has been on the job for about five or six years, started his career in Montreal, and now works mainly in Gatineau, Que. That day he was on duty in Maniwaki, where he also works on occasion.

Special constables are peace officers, and they have the authority to use force while making arrests. In Quebec they're equipped with handcuffs, a retractable baton, pepper spray and a handgun.

Security guards watched

Also in the waiting room when the fight broke out near the doorway to another room were the 18-year-old's mother, his 16-year-old cousin and a 17-year-old who had recently befriended the elder teen at a detention centre in Gatineau's Hull sector.

A smartphone video taken by the 16-year-old from inside the room Wednesday shows the special constable with his arm around the 18-year-old's neck, grappling with him as three security guards watch. One of the guards runs out briefly to call police, then returns.

Two of the guards then help the constable push the teen into the adjacent room, out of view of the camera, and a fourth guard arrives. The altercation between the special constable and the teen continues out of view as the four guards watch through the doorway. They're soon joined by the teen's mother.

The scuffle goes quiet, the mother walks back toward the other teens, and the special constable is heard asking in French, "Put your hands behind your back, put your hands behind your back."

Officer struck, fires gun

The fight then abruptly resumes, still off camera in the other room. Some of the guards enter the room while others stand watching at the doorway as the mother rushes back up behind them.

At some point the teen manages to get hold of the special constable's baton and strikes the officer once in the head with it, according to Quebec's police watchdog, Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes (BEI), which is investigating. 

On the video there's a repeated smacking sound, followed by screaming.

Then the officer unholsters his gun.

The mother screams at the special constable to put the gun down, and the 16-year-old shooting the video runs up to the doorway, where his view is blocked by guards.

There's a single loud bang, followed by frenzied shouting before the video ends. It was uploaded to Facebook and shared widely that same afternoon.

An ambulance was called at 1:15 p.m., arrived at 1:19 p.m., and left the courthouse with the teen at 1:34 p.m., according to Outaouais paramedics. The teen had been shot in the face and the bullet became lodged in his neck. He was in a coma Thursday awaiting surgery to remove it.

The special constable was also taken to hospital, and was later released.

Pepper spray not used

The special constable's pepper spray wasn't deployed during the altercation. When asked Thursday why not, the head of the special constable's union said there was some kind of problem with it.

"The information I have is he tried [to use the pepper spray], but he had a problem. I don't know what happened. Maybe he didn't have time to activate the pepper spray, and that's why he passed to the next step," said Franck Perales, president of Syndicat des constables spéciaux du gouvernement du Québec (SCSGQ).

He also said special constables should be equipped with Tasers, which would be up to the province to decide.

Perales said there aren't enough special constables in courthouses in the province, and that it's been a gripe of the union's for some time. Private security guards don't have the adequate training or authority to handle violent situations, he said.

"They don't have that. That is a problem," Perales said.

"What happened yesterday, it's not supposed to be like that. That's my impression. If you have enough staff, you immobilize the guy, you use the handcuffs ... you take the guy, and you give him to the [corrections officers]. That's it. But it was not like that."

A hearing on the issue of private security guards being used at courthouses and other government buildings instead of special constables is set to be heard in court in Quebec City on Monday.

What happens now

The BEI investigation into whether the special constable should face charges is ongoing and is expected to take some time.

Meanwhile, a youth was arrested by Quebec provincial police Thursday and charged with intimidation after allegedly posting a threat against the special constable on Facebook. The youth was released from custody and is expected to appear in court again in April.

As for the 18-year-old who was shot, he remained in hospital Friday and his life is no longer considered to be in danger, BEI said in a news release. As of Friday, no charges related to the altercation had been laid against him.

At the courthouse in Maniwaki on Friday there were two special constables on duty instead of one, and according to Perales, it was the same in other small courthouses across the province.