Teenager kidnapped after a “sneak-up”: the young people had stolen a cell phone, according to the accused

The man accused of having kidnapped and kidnapped a teenager who had come to knock on his door with his friends to play a joke maintains that the “rude” and “provocative” young people took the opportunity to steal his wife’s cell phone.

• Also read: Teenager sequestered after a “sonne-decrisse”: they wrongly believed that these young people had had a party at their house

• Also read: After a “sound-down”: beaten, dragged then tied up in a garage

Claude Bourgie was waking up from a nap in his living room when he heard a knock on the door at his home on August 16, 2021. He had returned the day before from a long stay in Guinea, where he had been very ill.

“It didn’t hit, that vargait“, he indicated during his testimony in his defense Friday afternoon at the Saint-Jérôme courthouse.

According to the Crown’s theory, four teenagers wanted to make a joke commonly called “sound-decrisse”. But according to the accused, they were thieves.

As he left his house, he saw one hiding in his hedge, then another further down the sidewalk, he explained.

Phone gone

His partner, Mariama Diaby, also accused in this case, then told him that his phone which was on a table outside had disappeared.

“I can’t run, I can’t do much. I said to myself: I’m going to take my tank. I have difficulty breathing, I have difficulty walking,” explained Bourgie, 65 years old.

The accused then parked his Porsche vehicle on the sidewalk, opposite the two young people.

One of them was “a little provocateur,” according to Bourgie. The sixty-year-old then asked him to give him the cell phone he was holding in his hands, but was allegedly told: “it’s my phone.”

Bourgie then told him: “You are going to come with the rest of us and the police will take care of you.”

Rude victim

The victim, aged 14 at the time, was “very, very rude” when the accused and a third party, who cannot be identified, walked her back to their home in Saint-Sauveur.

The mining consultant, however, was silent on what happened once the teenager reached the garage.

“Mr. Bourgie asked me to get on my knees, to lie on my stomach. Then he found a rope in his garage and asked [un tiers] to tie me up,” the victim told the jury last week.

The sixty-year-old said he had a verbal altercation with two other teenagers who had just arrived at his house a few moments later.

“I tell them: stay on the sidewalk. What are you doing here? Are you thieves? Were you the one in the pool?” Bourgie remembered, referring to the ten or so young people who had come to party at his house during his absence.

A police officer who intervened on both occasions confirmed that it was not the same teenagers.

“Can I have peace at home? It’s not a public park,” Bourgie then said, exasperated.

Claude Bourgie’s testimony will continue Monday before Judge Gregory Moore and will be followed by that of Mariama Diaby.