Laval Police beat: Pilferers plunder Laval lamp posts

With no more Canadian pennies to melt down for profit, copper grubbers have turned to making off with bits of the semi-precious metal that they remove from public infrastructure like metal plaques, posts and wiring, Laval police reported.

This time the scavengers made off with copper wiring that they removed from recently erected Laval street lights in a new housing development on Cécile-Dagenais street.

“During the night of Feb. 13, one or perhaps two suspects decided to pull all of the copper wiring from about a dozen lampposts,” Const. Franco di Genova told The Suburban.

He estimated that the damage will cost Laval taxpayers about $8,000 to fix.

A Laval policewoman and a motorist sustained non-life-threatening injuries when her police car crashed into another vehicle, March 7.

“Two police officers were heading eastbound on Samson around 2:30-2:45 p.m., responding to an emergency call about road rage,” Const. di Genova related. “As they reached the intersection of the Highway 13 off-ramp, their vehicle collided with a car driven by a 32-year-old woman who was driving west on Samson.”

“The police car’s emergency lights and siren were operating at the time, though it remains unclear precisely what happened at the intersection,” he added.

The airbags on both vehicles deployed, saving the lives of the passengers inside. Urgences santé immobilized both police officers and the motorist on backboards—a standard precaution when head or neck trauma is suspected—and transported them to hospital.

“The injuries to both drivers proved minor,” reassured Const. di Genova, “and the police officer in the passenger seat was found to be uninjured, after a precautionary medical.”

“Laval police accident investigators are studying the collision,” he concluded, “and both cars are writeoffs.”

“Beware if anyone offers to sell you a guitar cheap, because you might be in possession of stolen property,” Const. di Genova cautioned The Suburban readers, after thieves entered the Archambault music store March 4. “They made off with about 10 acoustic and electric guitars worth approximately $10,000,” he said. “The perpetrators are two men, who were dressed all in black. Investigators will be studying the video of them that was recorded on the store’s video camera.”

“The first officers to arrive on the scene saw that the windows of the store had been smashed,” recounted Const. di Genova. “They called in the canine squad to sniff the store, but found no suspects inside.

The burglary was the second at the store in three weeks, he noted.

“The first one occurred on Feb. 10, when musical instruments worth about $14,000 were stolen.”

Police and ambulance technicians rushed to des Laurentides and St. Elzéar, around 12:30 a.m., March 6, after an injured man entered the dépanneur-gas bar there, lay down and asked staff to call for emergency medical help.“He was bleeding at the elbow from what appeared to be a gunshot wound,” reported Const. di Genova. According to police sources Jonathan Nostrome, 35, who suffered three gunshot wounds, was known to them for his involvement with street gangs in Laval.

“Although the victim has a pedigree, we couldn’t confirm that this incident was street gang related,” said Const. di Genova.

Police officers fanned out and found a dark gray Toyota Corolla parked on St. Elzéar about 200 metres west of the depanneaur.

“The driver’s door was wide open, the driver’s window was smashed to smithereens and there appeared to be several bullet holes in the car,” continued Const. di Genova. “We think that the victim might have met someone about 10 minutes earlier or had an altercation there and, after he was shot, walked over to the dépanneur-gas bar to ask for help.

At the time The Suburban went to press, Nostrome remained incubated at the Sacré Cœur hospital primary trauma care centre, however Const. di Genova described his injuries as “non-life-threatening.”

Robber singing soprano


A career in armed robbery can be dangerous for a man’s health, a Laval bandit discovered, after allegedly attempting to rob a dépanneur-gas bar at 5220 Notre Dame in Chomedey, Feb. 19.

“At 12:20 a.m. the suspect walked up to the cash, asked the cashier to produce money from the cash register and produced a knife with a four-inch blade,” recounted Const. di Genova.

“The cashier, surprised, took a couple of steps back, reached under the counter, and pulled out a knife of his own, like in the movie where Crocodile Dundee says ‘now this is a knife, my friend,” he continued. “At that point, the suspect stepped back and fled, running. The cashier pursued the suspect in the parking lot, but the robber escaped, so he returned and called 911 to give police a description of the assailant.”

Soon afterward, at about 1 a.m. police received another emergency call from a woman who said that someone was knocking at her door.

“The officers arrived to find the man complaining of pain,” Const. di Genova said. “They noticed that his clothes and appearance precisely matched the physical description they had heard on the radio robbery call a few minutes earlier and handcuffed him.”

“The suspect was taken by ambulance to hospital, where he was treated for a testicular torsion, before being released later that morning to the custody of detectives,” he said.

Const. di Genova strongly warned members of the public against physically confronting an armed aggressor.

“Just give them the cash,” he urged. “It’s easy to imagine this could have turned out much differently, should something have gone awry.”