Man charged with threatening Journal de Montréal reporter
A 22-year-old Lachine man has been charged with uttering threats at a Journal de Montréal reporter to prevent him from reporting on his court case. Jessy Dylan Lapointe, who’s being held at the Montreal Detention Centre, made a brief appearance via video linkup before Quebec Court Judge Sonia Mastro Matteo at the Montreal courthouse on Monday. The accused is already serving a sentence he received in October after he pleaded guilty to three charges involving two young women and a minor. In 2015, the accused sent an intimate photo of a 16-year-old girl to another person after she rejected him. Because the girl was a minor, the photo was considered child pornography in the eyes of the law. In the second case, he posted a nude photo of a young woman he knew on a social media after she rejected him. The photo was posted without her consent. In the third case, he threatened to rape and cause bodily harm to a young woman who rejected him. He also ransacked the woman’s apartment. In March, reporter Michaël Nguyen covered a court hearing in Lapointe’s case, and an article detailing Lapointe’s crimes appeared in the Journal de Montréal. During another hearing, on July 6, Lapointe is alleged to have threatened the reporter from inside the prisoner’s dock. On Monday, Lapointe was charged with using intimidation “for the purpose of compelling another person to abstain from doing anything that he or she has a lawful right to do” and with uttering threats with the intention of harassing the reporter. If he is released while serving his current sentence, he must maintain a certain distance from Nguyen, the Journal de Montréal and the Montreal courthouse, where Nguyen regularly works, except to attend his own court dates. The case returns to court in January.