Quebec daycare bus crash driver not criminally responsible

Not criminally responsible

Photo: The Canadian Press

The scene outside a daycare centre in Laval, Que, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023, where a bus crashed killing two children. A Superior Court judge is to render a final decision Tuesday on whether a Quebec man is not criminally responsible in the deaths of two young children.

UPDATE 6:58 a.m.

A Quebec Superior Court judge has declared a man not criminally responsible for killing two children and injuring six others when he drove a bus into a Montreal-area daycare in 2023.

Justice Éric Downs has accepted the joint recommendation of criminal non-responsibility from the Crown and the defence in the case of Pierre Ny St-Amand.

The judge says Ny St-Amand was unable to discern right from wrong when he crashed into the daycare in Laval, Que., on Feb. 8, 2023.

More coming.

ORIGINAL 6:10 a.m.

A Superior Court judge is to render a decision today on whether a Quebec man is not criminally responsible after he drove a city bus into a Montreal-area daycare in 2023, killing two children and injuring six others.

Justice Éric Downs will tell the court whether he accepts the joint recommendation of criminal non-responsibility from the Crown and the defence in the case of Pierre Ny St-Amand.

Separate psychiatrists — one for the Crown, the other for the defence — evaluated Ny St-Amand and came to the same conclusion: it is likely he was experiencing psychosis when he drove the bus into the daycare in Laval, Que., on the morning of Feb. 8, 2023.

Ny St-Amand, a former Laval public transit employee, is charged with two counts of second-degree murder, and assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm in relation to the six other children who were injured.

The Crown has said it will seek to have Ny St-Amand declared a "high-risk accused," a designation that involves stricter rules governing absences from any treatment facility.

Downs has cautioned that a finding of criminal non-responsibility is neither an acquittal nor a conviction in the sense of the law, adding that there is no doubt the accused committed the acts.