6 hours Ago By Gary Dimmock
After they arrested Alain Bellefeuille, who had just killed one of their own in a wellness check turned deadly, OPP officers formed a convoy as they transported him to the Rockland detachment. Some of the officers who followed the lead cruiser were from different detachments but felt compelled to race to the scene after they heard a shots-fired call and officers were hit. OPP Const.
Justin Boyd rushed to the scene and did everything he could, searching for a potential shooter and wounded officers. Boyd also found a key piece of evidence — the slain officer’s bodycam — in the neighbour’s yard. Boyd detailed his account of the May 11, 2023 call at Bellefeuille’s first-degree murder trial on Tuesday, April 22.
Bellefeuille is on trial for the killing of OPP Sgt. Eric Mueller and shooting of Const. Marc Lauzon.
They were shot within seconds of entering his home in Bourget, around 50 km east of Ottawa. That Bellefeuille shot the officers is not in question. His defence team — Leo Russomanno and Biagio Del Greco — say Bellefeuille thought it was a home invasion, while the police theory, since adopted by prosecutors, is that it was an ambush that had the accused lying in wait to kill police officers.
But Bellefeuille, the jury has heard, never called the police, nor expected them, let alone at 2:30 in the morning. His next-door neighbour called 911, saying she thought she heard gunfire and Bellefeuille may have shot himself. (He didn’t.
) She made the call out of concern for her neighbour. Chaotic police scene Boyd recounted the events under examination-in-chief by Assistant Crown Attorney François Dulude, and said it was a chaotic police scene with no briefings. Emotions were high, especially for those who knew the officers who were shot.
The officers’ chaotic scene was after the shooter was arrested, and after the officers had been transported to hospital. Police were searching for wounded officers all the way to the creek in the woods at the back of the property. They warned one another to watch out for crossfire and kept searching until one officer said they had heard earlier they had been transported by ambulance earlier.
In the search in the yard, Const. Pierre Dubois accidentally pulled his trigger on his semi-automatic rifle. The misfired round went into the ground.
Boyd recalled the hearing “Misfire, Misfire” and told the jury his fellow officer “hit the trigger by accident, he didn’t mean to shoot.” As they were searching the property and the woods in the dark, arresting officer Ionut Mihuta told fellow officers to be “very cautious with your fingers on the trigger”, according to Const. Boyd’s testimony.
Boyd recalled the police radio was going crazy and it was a frantic search with no briefing. Boyd was assigned to follow Dubois’s cruiser to the Rockland detachment. Dubois, the officer who accidentally fired his rifle at the scene, was tasked to transport Bellefeuille to the detachment.
Bellefeuille was placed in a cell and paramedics came to treat him. Paramedics treated him in the cell as two officers watched from outside in the hallway of the cell blocks. Bellefeuille was in the last cell at the end of the hall on the left.
One of the officers keeping watch was Boyd. Paramedics tended to Bellefeuille and said he need to go the hospital. It was at this point, Boyd asked paramedics why they needed to transport Bellefeuille to hospital.
“I didn’t observe any injuries that required medical attention,” the officer testified. The paramedics thought otherwise. Boyd, who responded to the scene after the events, didn’t know that during the arrest, a fellow officer, Ionut Mihuta, had punched up Bellefeuille about the head out of fear.
Mihuta said his emotions got the best of him when he threatened, with rifle drawn, to kill an unarmed suspect only to beat him about the head after he was handcuffed behind his back, and lying on his stomach with his face down. The paramedics transported the handcuffed Bellefeuille to hospital with Boyd in the back of the ambulance. In the ride to hospital, Boyd makes notes in his duty book about what he remembers happening in the day in question.
The jury was shown photographs of Bellefeuille taken at hospital. In the photographs, you can see abrasions on his forehead and face. He also has red marks on his back and blood and a burn on his right elbow.
The images also show he has several ECG leads used to check his heart. Boyd also told court police checked Bellefeuille’s pockets and seized a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, some change and a shell casing. The trial resumes Wednesday with the cross-examination of Boyd, who the Crown introduced as a former olympian (water polo).
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