Coroner: Gatineau couple died from fentanyl overdose
Three-year-old child sent to hospital after surviving four days alone in home
A couple found dead in a Gatineau apartment in February while the man’s three-year-old boy was left to fend for himself died of a fentanyl overdose, a Quebec coroner has found.
The badly decomposed bodies of Chris Lecouvie, 33, and his 20-year-old girlfriend, Amélie Gauthier-Matte, were found by a friend on Feb. 27 in Gauthier-Matte’s second-floor apartment on Rue Bégin.
The woman went to check on the couple after she saw the toddler tossing toys out the window, wrote Dr. Pierre Bourassa, the examining coroner.
Lecouvie and Gauthier-Matte were found on the bed “intertwined” and had likely been dead for four days before they were discovered, coroner said. The child was taken to hospital.
Toxicology tests showed the couple had lethal levels of fentanyl in their bloodstreams, along with MDMA (ecstasy) and methamphetamine in their blood and stomachs.
Lecouvie also had traces of cannabis in his stomach, while Gauthier-Matte had traces of heroin. Drug paraphernalia was also found in the apartment. There was no sign of violence.
The cause of both deaths was respiratory arrest due to fentanyl poisoning and the probable day of death was Feb. 23, the coroner wrote. The report was released to the public on Thursday.
Gauthier-Matte was from northern Ontario and had arrived in Gatineau in October 2016. She had previously struggled with addiction, the coroner wrote.
At the time of his death, friends said Lecouvie had grown up in a string of foster homes and had long struggled with drugs. He tried to better his life after his son was born.
“He lived a very rough life, but in the last five years he had turned his life around,” friend Joni Reed told the Citizen in February. “He was amazing and he really did everything for that little boy.”
Lecouvie was from Ottawa. The couple had been together since the fall.