Montreal police have arrested a 19-year-old man in connection with the three people killed in a brawl involving more than a dozen people last week in Montreal’s Plateau-Mont-Royal borough.
The 19-year-old, whose identity has not yet been released, is expected to appear in court on Thursday afternoon, where police say he will face a second-degree murder charge.
The victims were 15, 23 and 25 years old. CBC News is withholding the identity of the 15-year-old because he was a minor. The other victims are Alexandre Vatamanu and Ulrick Peterson Célestin.
In a Thursday morning news release, police said they believe two of the three victims were involved in the killings. They did not specify which.
“The numerous pieces of evidence analyzed following the event show that one of the deceased victims was directly involved in two of the murders, while another of the deceased victims was responsible for the third murder,” the head of Montreal’s major crimes division, Major Jean-Sébastien Caron, said in a statement.
The Service de police de la Ville de Montréal said its major crimes unit will continue to investigate the fight to try to learn why it started. They are asking anyone with information to share it by calling Info-Crime at 514-393-1193.
Last week, Caron said in a news conference that the May 21 brawl was a “chance event,” unrelated to gangs or turf wars.
“It was a fight that degenerated which, unfortunately, led to the death of three people,” Caron said.
The father of the 25-year-old victim, Ulrick Peterson Célestin, spoke to reporters at the scene the next morning.
Jean-Marie Célestin said his son had a two-year-old daughter and had recently completed a concrete certification and worked in construction.
“He was a nice and honest guy. His only problem he had was that he sometimes got upset too easily,” Célestin said. “How could it have degenerated in this way? To have three people dead? Three mournings, three families in pain. Just for these silly disputes. That’s what makes me so mad.”
The fight took place at around 7 p.m. last Tuesday in the parking lot of a subsidized apartment building between St-André and Mentana streets, near La Fontaine Park.
José Aquino, who saw part of the fight from his window, said he saw one person involved in the brawl take out a wrench and, seconds later, another person took out a knife that looked like “a little machete.”
Witnesses describe a chaotic scene Tuesday evening in a parking lot near an apartment building in the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough, while police try to piece together how the deadly incident unfolded, and who may have been involved.
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