Getaway driver in attack took job to feed drug habit, court told
Three men charged in alleged assault on retired police Mafia expert and his mother
The man who allegedly acted as the getaway driver when three men assaulted retired police detective Pietro Poletti inside his home in Lasalle last week told police he did it to feed his longtime drug habit.
Parts of Louis Simon Jacques’s interrogation by the Montreal police were revealed to Quebec Court Judge Mylène Grégoire as the bail hearing for the three men charged with the assault began Friday morning.
The three men — Sandel Pierre, 18, Yadely Deutz St. Jean, 23, and
Jacques, 30 — face 10 charges each in the case. They were arrested less than eight hours after Poletti, a former Montreal police specialist on the Montreal Mafia, and his mother were assaulted inside his home. Three men, all wearing surgical masks, rang his doorbell and Poletti, who was watching television at the time, answered. One of the three men said, “It’s him,” and they proceeded to hit him with blunt objects, including a brick and a broom.
At one point in the attack one of the men said “Shoot him.”
Poletti’s 87-year-old mother was in the basement of their home when the attack occurred.
When she heard her son shout she headed up a stairway leading to the living room. One of the assailants grabbed a chain she was wearing and tried to push her back down the stairs. She suffered minor injuries and told police she came close to losing her balance on the stairway.
While summarizing the evidence in the case, prosecutor Antonio Parapuf told the judge that when Jacques was interrogated he said he did not know Poletti at all and that St. Jean hired him to act as a driver on June 12.
He said he didn’t know the three men he was driving for were planning to attack someone. He told the police detective who interrogated him that St. Jean had him follow instructions on a GPS locator. When he was told to stop on a street that intersects the street where Poletti lives, the three men who had been riding in his car, including St. Jean, jumped out and headed toward Poletti’s home. Jacques noted that one of the men took a broom he had stored in his car before he headed out. And when the same man returned to his car, the broom was gone. Pieces of the broom were later recovered outside Poletti’s home.
Jacques told the interrogator that he agreed to drive for St. Jean to feed a drug habit he has had “since he was a teenager,” Parapuf said.
When St. Jean was interrogated, he was shown photos collected during the investigation. He was asked if the men intended to kill Poletti and he replied with: “I think the photos speak for themselves. If we wanted to kill him, he’d be dead.”
Jacques used his 2014 Nissan Sentra, registered in his name, for the job. A security camera near Poletti’s home recorded the moments when the three men headed for Poletti’s home and when they returned to the Sentra. A neighbour of Poletti’s witnessed as the men piled into the car in a hurry and suspected something was wrong. He followed the Sentra in his own vehicle and managed to read Jacques’s licence plate. It was that information that led police to arrest four men, including Jacques, at an intersection near the Jacques Cartier Bridge in Longueuil, eight hours after the attack. One of the men, a resident of St-jean-surrichelieu, was released without being charged. Parapuf said it is believed the man was not involved in the attack.
When the Sentra was searched, police found a loaded and prohibited firearm that had been stolen during a break-in in Lasalle last year along with 16 other firearms. The firearm was inside a Nike Air Jordan gym bag that Jacques said St. Jean had handled often on the day of the attack. The police also found small amounts of various drugs inside the Sentra.
The bail hearing will resume on June 26.