The man accused of first -degree murder and attempt to murder in the shooting of three provincial police officers (OPP) of Ontario during a well -being control in his home in the east of Ontario. guilty of all charges.
It was an admitted fact in the event that Alain Bellefeuille killed the sergeant. Eric Mueller and the injured agents Mark Lauzon and François Gamache-Asselin when he opened fire on them in the early hours of May 11, 2023.
The officers had been sent to their rural house rented in Bourget, Ontario, east of Ottawa, after a neighbor called 911 and reported having heard strong noises, including screams and shots, followed by silence.
In question during the trial it was if Bellefeuille knew that the people who entered their home were the police, and what their intentions were when he repeatedly shot their rifle for several minutes.
The crucial evidence in the case, for the crown and defense, came from the cameras used in the body of Mueller, Gamache-Asselin and other officers who arrived after the shots were fired, then included. Ionut “John” Mihuta, who arrested Bellefeuille. That image can be seen in the following stories:
Bellefeuille declared himself innocent in March when his bilingual trial began in the Superior Court in L’Orignal, Ontario. – The oldest court of Ontario.
Day after day, Mueller’s family, dressed in black, and a large multitude of followers and colleagues from the victims filled the wooden banks on the crown side of the court gallery.
Lauzon, who suffered wounds that alter life and have not returned to work, attended most of the days, and their frequent smiles and laughs during the breaks stood out in a sea of gloomy faces. Gamache-Asselin, who suffered a minor laceration of knee and has returned to work, occasionally attended.
The room defense side behind the prisoner’s box was filled in key moments, such as the first day of Bellefeuille’s testimony earlier this month, but most of the days the procedures attended his sister, mother and aunt.
Security was tight. Two cruises took Bellefeuille to the small Palace of Justice every day, with a team of special agents that accompanied him through the same few entrances and corridors used by the public, the jury, the judge and the lawyers. Two officers kept the door inside the courtroom, and the tactical officers were parked outside the court.
Bellefeuille took the position in his own defense. He testified that he had been asleep and his dog barking, lights and hitting the lights and hitting out of his rented rural house. He said that he immediately believed that someone was trying to enter, and that he had been afraid of such an attack since his friends suffered a violent invasion of the home years before.
The defense lawyer of Bellefeuille, Leo Russomanno, urged the jury to consider the events from the perspective of Bellefeuille, emphasizing that everything happened in the period of only four minutes, from the moment the police reached the moment when his client called 911 to inform that he had shot an officer.
In the crown closure presentations, Tansey called Bellefeuille’s actions that “devastating, calculated and precise.”
Bellefeuille fired four separated volleas from his high -power SKS rifle, which was equipped with an illegally modified magazine that could contain 22 rounds instead of the five allowed.
He also removed the worn camera from Mueller’s body, hid it in his pocket and then threw it into his neighbor’s courtyard.
The Crown argued that this was not the behavior of someone who acted in self -defense, but from someone who had committed a “cold and calculated murder.”
Two of the 14 original jury members were fired during the trial: one after the Pueperson complained about the behavior of intimidation by another jury, and the other to preserve public confidence in the justice system after a jury who arrived late took a trip to the court with an OPP officer.
