Prison break suspect’s real name reveals record
One of the four suspects, arrested following a brazen prison break last month in which a helicopter was hijacked and used to briefly free two men, will appear in court Tuesday under his true name for the first time.
The man, 26, whose real name is Billi Beaudoin, was originally charged under the name Yagé Beaudoin. He was arrested and accused of helping to free two men — Benjamin Hudon Barbeau, 36, and Dany Provençal, 33 — from the St-Jérôme Detention Centre in March.
During a formality hearing on Tuesday, the court record at the St-Jérôme courthouse is expected to be amended to reflect Billi Beaudoin’s true identity, and he is supposed to be charged with providing a false identity to police — in addition to the 25 charges he faces in relation to the prison break.
On March 17, two men hijacked a helicopter from the Laurentians after posing as tourists on a sightseeing tour. The pilot was forced at gunpoint to land the craft on a roof of the detention centre, where Barbeau and Provençal were waiting.
According to a report in the Journal de Montréal last month, the real Yagé Beaudoin, a Montreal resident who does not have a criminal record, knows Billi Beaudoin, a resident of Sherbrooke.
Through a lawyer, Yagé Beaudoin said he did not appreciate having his name associated with the most highprofile prison break in the province in many years.
The crime was reported worldwide after Beaudoin, Provençal, Hudon Barbeau and a fourth man, Mathieu Steven Marchisio, 20, were arrested within hours of the escape.
When he is alleged to have given the fake name to police, Billi Beaudoin was in all likelihood trying to hide the long criminal record he has accumulated in just eight years as an adult. After all four men were arrested and had made their initial court appearances in March, the SQ said Beaudoin revealed his true identity shortly after providing the fake one. The SQ verified his fingerprints to be sure he was actually the Sherbrooke man who possesses the lengthy criminal record.
Most recently, Beaudoin was sentenced to a threemonth prison term, on Jan. 25, 2012, for assaulting a prison guard at the Donnacona Institution, a maximum- security federal penitentiary near Quebec City. He assaulted the guard while serving a 45-month sentence he received at the Sherbrooke courthouse, on Feb. 21, 2008, after pleading guilty to aggravated assault, robbery and uttering threats.
Also in 2008, Beaudoin was sentenced to a one-year prison term for assaulting a man for no apparent reason after both left a bar in Sherbrooke, on Jan. 5, 2008. His criminal record indicates Beaudoin had been in and out of detention centres at several points in his life before being sent to a federal penitentiary.