A year after a tragic accident at a Montreal-area daycare, daycare workers and families gathered for a solemn ceremony where they released two white balloons into the sky in remembrance of the two young children who lost their lives and the six others who were injured. The accident occurred when a city bus turned off the street and crashed through the front of the Garderie Éducative Ste-Rose in Laval, causing devastation during the busy morning drop-off period.
André Beaudoin, a father of two who was involved in rescuing children from under the bus, expressed that seeing the families of the victims helped in the process of grieving. The memory of the bus rolling past him as he was unbuckling his son’s seatbelt on that fateful morning still lingers with him. The crash claimed the lives of five-year-old Maëva David and four-year-old Jacob Gauthier, while six other children were hospitalized.
The daycare requested that instead of leaving flowers or stuffed animals outside the building, people make donations to the foundations of the hospitals that treated the victims, Cité de la Santé in Laval and Ste-Justine children’s hospital in Montreal. The preliminary hearing for the former city bus driver Pierre Ny St-Amand, who is charged with two counts of first-degree murder as well as several other charges, including attempted murder and aggravated assault, is set for March. His lawyer plans to argue that the 52-year-old did not have the necessary criminal intent for first-degree murder.