Neighbors noticed that Kim Lebel was not in her right mind

Kim Lebel’s neighbors noticed that he was behaving strangely in the hours before the murder of Jacques Côté. However, they did not see fit to alert the police.

On April 6, 2022, Monique Biron was awakened around 6 a.m. by screams from her neighbor, Kim Lebel.

I didn’t understand what he was sayingshe told coroner Géhane Kamel, as part of the public inquiry into the murder of Jacques Côté. I heard him yelling at his dog. I said to myself: he must be looking for his dog. I went back to sleep.

Kim Lebel was in the middle of a psychotic episode. Two days earlier, his parents had called 911 because their son refused to go to the hospital. The police then estimated that Kim Lebel was not in crisis, and that they could not legally intervene.

During the morning, Monique Biron and her partner Daniel Grenier leave their home for a walk. They then see Kim Lebel on the roof of her canvas tempo shelter.

The garage had started to tear apart, said Daniel Grenier, also called to the witness box. That’s when we realized there was something wrong.

I heard him say ‘come and get me, come and get me’. He looked up to the sky.

The coroner, Géhane Kamel, seemed surprised that the couple had not decided to alert the police at that time.

Does it often happen that neighbors get grilled at a time?, she asked Monique Biron. Isn’t that something you found strange?

Yes, but I didn’t dwell on thatreplied the lady.

Like Hulk

At the beginning of the afternoon, Daniel Grenier sees his neighbor running around his house. He is shirtless and barefoot.

He was running with his arms in the air. A bit like in the Hulk filmshe illustrated.

It is at this moment that Daniel Grenier begins to fear his neighbor. He decides to join his partner at the neighbor’s across the street.

Seeing the state he was in, I ran away pretty quickly. I could see he wasn’t in his right mind.

The couple observe him from inside the house, but notice that he does not seem aggressive.

We said to ourselves: if he breaks something or tries to get in, we’ll call the police.specified Daniel Grenier.

At the end of their respective testimonies, the coroner made the same recommendation to Daniel Grenier and Monique Biron.

If ever there was a similar event that was to happen again, from the moment your 6th sense turns on, it’s better to disturb the police for nothing, he stressed. I sincerely prefer that we call on them. It might have been too late anyway. But the fact of caring about others, of caring about our neighbors, means that we could perhaps have saved a life.

A witness to the murder says

It was a little later, around 3 p.m., that the worst happened. Mathieu Tremblay was in his van pick-up. He was going to visit one of his friends when he walked into Kim Lebel’s driveway with the intention of turning around.

I saw someone coming towards me, from the entrance of the neighbor across the street, with a metal bar, testified Mathieu Tremblay. He held it up in the air. He looked angry. I said to myself: Did you hang something? I rolled down my window to talk to him.

Kim Lebel then began to shout incomprehensible things and hit the vehicle with the metal bar equipped with a window cutter.

He hit my window, it shattered. I moved forward, I started shouting at him: what’s happening? I didn’t understand anything.

As he walked away, Mathieu Tremblay tried to warn a neighbor who was returning home by car not to approach. She parked in her driveway. That’s when Kim Lebel targeted her. He began to violently hit his vehicle with his weapon.

He told her: ”I’m going to kill you, my female dog… it’s your last day alive!”. He kept shouting. He opened the door, folded it in on itself. He never tried to hit her. He was focusé (sic) on his vehicle.

Mathieu Tremblay shouts at Kim Lebel to stop. He hears two men talking near him. One of them is Jacques Côté.

I heard one of them say: we should help him. I decided to get out of my truck. I was to Kim’s right. Jacques Côté arrived to his left. He turned to Jacques and hit him with a metal bar. I remained stupid. I got back into my truck. I saw Jacques staggering across the street. It was there that he received several blows with a metal bar.

In the minutes that followed, several people, including Kim Lebel’s father, rushed towards him at low speed with their vehicle to try to control him. He eventually calmed down and was arrested moments later.

Disconnected from reality

When they arrived on the scene, the paramedics quickly realized that they could do nothing to save Jacques Côté.

There was a lot of blood. It was an obvious deathsoberly summarizes paramedic Camille Lemay-Sauvageau.

She and her colleague are responsible for driving Kim Lebel back to the hospital center. During ambulance transport, the suspect is still incoherent. He is very talkative, agitated and has a lot of secretions on his face.

He was very disoriented. I tried to have contact with him, it was impossibleexplained the paramedic.

He talked about Vikings, Valhalla, Lucifer. He said I looked like a Viking.

Once in the hospital, Kim Lebel was still disconnected from reality. Police officer Louis Lachance, who had the mission to question him, quickly noted that the suspect was not capable of understanding his rights. The police officer took careful notes of this meeting, which he read to the coroner.

Why are you doing this? I’m not pregnant. Am I going to give birth?Kim Lebel said in particular when the police confiscated her clothes.

You’re arrested for murder. You know whose murder?, Louis Lachance’s colleague asked him.

There is always preyreplied the suspect.

It was only the next day, when the police returned to visit him in the psychiatry department, that Kim Lebel came to.