Man seeking revenge killed wrong person

PLEADS GUILTY

PAUL CHERRY MONTREAL • A young Montrealer pleaded guilty on Thursday to having shot and killed the wrong man while he was seeking revenge for the death of a friend.

Jayson Riché-Paquet, 20, appeared before Quebec Superior Court Justice Marc-André Blanchard at the Montreal courthouse where he pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the Aug. 22, 2015, death of Serge Saninga. In doing so, Riché-Paquet admitted he was actually trying to kill Davidson Arretus, 21, a man Riché-Paquet believed had played a role in the 2014 death of his friend Salem Yahiaoui.

“Riché-Paquet (believed) that Davidson Arretus was one of the belligerents who had caused the death of Yahiaoui (who was stabbed during a fight). Arretus was never charged due to a lack of evidence,” Blanchard said as he read from a joint statement of facts agreed upon by prosecutor Louis Bouthillier and three defence lawyers in the case.

While Riché-Paquet and his accomplice, Randy Plaisir, 22, were initially charged with first-degree murder in the case, they pleaded guilty to reduced charges on Thursday. Both men admitted to having conspired to kill Arretus. Plaisir admitted he was driving the car Riché-Paquet fired from when he shot Saninga by accident, but Plaisir did not plead guilty to the actual homicide.

At the time of the shooting, Arretus and Saninga were together and had just exited a convenience store in the Villeray-Saint-Michel-ParcExtension borough.

Riché-Paquet was using his father’s car for the driveby shooting. As Arretus and Saninga left the store, the car slowed down, a passenger side window was lowered and someone shouted out Arretus’s name in Creole. Four shots were fired, but they all missed Arretus. Saninga was struck in the head. According to the coroner’s report, he was taken to the Santa Cabrini Hospital in St-Léonard and was declared dead an hour later.

Later that day, Arretus sent Riché-Paquet an emoticon of a kiss through his Facebook page.

For reasons not made clear in the statement of facts, three days before the shooting, Riché-Paquet filmed himself, using his cellphone, manipulating the firearm he would later use to kill Saninga. In 2016, Montreal police seized the gun used to shoot Saninga and noted that it matched the one RichéPaquet posed with in the video.

Arretus has a criminal record. On Nov. 16, 2016, he received a 19-month prison term for the illegal possession of a firearm that had been seized from his car. Montreal police seized the gun from Arretus three months after the failed attempt to kill him.

Saninga’s death touched a nerve in the St-Michel community. A month after he was killed, on Sept. 19, 2015, community groups staged a march against violence in his memory. The march was attended by more than 50 people, including several politicians and relatives of the victim.

Saninga was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and his family — he had five siblings — reportedly left the war-torn country to immigrate to Canada in 2006 to find a better life.

The case against RichéPaquet and Plaisir will return to court for a sentencing hearing on Feb. 9.