LAVAL — A Quebec Superior Court judge has declared a man not criminally responsible for killing two children and injuring six others when he drove a city bus into a Montreal-area daycare in 2023.
Justice Éric Downs today accepted the joint recommendation of criminal non-responsibility from the Crown and the defence and concluded Pierre Ny St-Amand was unable to discern right from wrong at the time of the crash.
Psychiatrists for the Crown and the defence both concluded it is likely Ny St-Amand was experiencing psychosis when he drove the bus into the daycare in Laval, Que., on Feb. 8, 2023, killing a four-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl.
One psychiatrist testified that 53-year-old Ny St-Amand had untreated post-traumatic stress disorder from his childhood as an orphan in war-torn Cambodia and might have targeted the daycare as a way of “killing his own past.”
Ny St-Amand had been charged with two counts of second-degree murder, as well as assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm in relation to six other children who were injured.
The Crown has indicated it will seek to have Ny St-Amand declared a “high-risk accused,” a designation that would require he face stricter rules around absences from any treatment facility.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 29, 2025.
Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press
