Found dead at home
On Aug. 1, Cheryl Bau-Tremblay’s family reported the pregnant woman missing. After days of searching, police found her dead inside her Beloeil home. Her partner is being questioned as the last person to see her alive.
Police found the body of Cheryl Bau-Tremblay, a pregnant woman who was recently reported missing, inside the house on Alexander St. in Beloeil she shared with her partner and his five-year-old child.
Ingrid Asselin from the Sûreté du Québec would not confirm the cause of death or how the body was found.
Bau-Tremblay, 28, was in the second trimester of a pregnancy when she was last seen leaving her home in the quiet Montérégie city on Aug. 1.
Neighbours said she had just moved to Alexander St. on July 1 with her partner Alexandre Gendron and his son.
Gendron was being questioned by police on Thursday afternoon.
“We’ll see what the interrogators find,” Asselin said when Bau-Tremblay’s body was first found, calling Gendron no longer “just a witness”. “He could be the last person to have seen her.”
Forensic identity agents began searching the home Thursday morning, although some neighbours said they didn’t see any police on the street before 10 a.m.
SQ investigators began working with local police Thursday after days of searching by the Régie intermunicipal de Richelieu-St-Laurent police, who work in 17 municipalities in the Montérégie area.
Many nearby residents have lived in Beloeil for years and said they have never heard of anything like this happening, calling it a “good, quiet” neighbourhood.
“It’s shocking,” said one woman, who has lived a few houses away for nearly 35 years.
Another neighbour said she last saw Bau-Tremblay about 15 days ago, when the pregnant woman moved her pickup truck out of her driveway.
Forensic agents were seen taking photos of the truck, and were visible through the living room window of the couple’s home.
Asselin from the SQ couldn’t say whether local police had already searched the home before, but that days of aerial, nautical and land searches led them to search the home and its perimeter.
Days earlier, Gendron told the Journal de Montréal he left his five-year-old son with the boy’s grandmother, and that he was distressed.
Bau-Tremblay was last seen leaving her home Saturday around 4 p.m. She had recently returned from Magog in the Eastern Townships. She left without any personal belongings, according to police.
No one who spoke to the Montreal Gazette could remember hearing any suspicious sounds that night.
Lina Chauvin, who lives beside the couple’s new home, said she was distressed.
“It’s sad for the child she was carrying, and for (Gendron’s) child,” she said.
“Nothing ever happens in Beloeil,” said Chauvin, who has lived on Alexander St. for nearly 50 years.
The street, like many others in the area, is lined with bungalows and well-tended lawns and gardens. The city of Beloeil is located along the Richelieu R iver, surrounded by farms and views of nearby Mont Saint-Hilaire.