Convicted drug dealer victim in fatal shooting
The man gunned down Thursday night inside a car-repair shop in St-Léonard once told a parole officer he had opted for the life of a drug dealer as a means to escape the poverty he experienced as a child.
Guy Therrien, 53, was out on full parole when he was fatally shot, still serving a sentence for cocaine possession. The Montreal police discovered his body inside a garage belonging to a car and truck-repair company based in a building on Lafrenaie St. in the St-Léonard borough. A 23-year-old man was injured in the shooting, which occurred just before 8:30 p.m. Thursday. He is now in stable condition.
Several hours after Therrien was killed, at around 11 a.m. Friday, members of a Montreal police SWAT team and major crimes squad investigators arrested a 44-yearold male suspect in Napierville. A police spokesperson said he was expected to be questioned by homicide detectives Friday.
At the same time the arrest was made, Montreal police could still be seen working along a stretch of Lafrenaie St. marked off with police tape. A German shepherd sniffer dog was led around the building where Therrien was killed in an apparent search for evidence.
Therrien had run into problems while serving his sentence. He was involved in a few fights with other inmates and served time in isolation for having trafficked in contraband tobacco. But when he was released on full parole in May 2017, records describe him as having been open with his parole officers while on day parole and as someone who had learned how to avoid “placing yourself in situations that involve risk.”
At the time of his death, Therrien was still serving the 70-month sentence he received at the Montreal courthouse in 2014 after he pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine for the purposes of trafficking. In June 2012, Montreal police seized five kilograms of cocaine from his home along with more than $35,000 in cash. At the time, the Montreal police said Therrien’s arrest was part of an investigation of a drug-trafficking network that involved members of various organized crime groups based in Montreal.
Decisions made by the Parole Board of Canada while he served the sentence suggest Therrien was not tied to a specific criminal organization, but had associated with many known criminals. He served time during the 1990s for having killed a businessman he owed money to. He also had served time during the same decade for having set fire to his own residence in an effort to collect insurance money.
The parole board was informed Therrien’s past crimes could be attributed to a fear of poverty. His father died when he was six, leaving his mother to raise eight children on her own.
“According to what is reported (in records filed to the parole board in 2016) you wanted to build a different future. Your ambition and your thirst for money drove you at an early age toward trades with big challenges and a lure toward quick and easy money,” said the summary of the parole board’s 2016 decisions.
That same thirst for quick and easy money saw Therrien arrested in 2001, along with a small group of Colombian drug smugglers who were shipping large quantities of cannabis to the U.S. while smuggling cocaine into Canada. On March 13, 2002, he was sentenced to a four-year prison term after he pleaded guilty to five charges filed against him as part of the RCMP investigation.
The shooting was the 17th homicide reported in Montreal in 2018.