Schoolyard vigil planned
A vigil will be held Saturday night in Mont-St-Hilaire in memory of Daphné Huard-Boudreault, the 18-year-old who was killed March 22. Huard-Boudreault’s boyfriend, Anthony Pratte-Lops, was arrested the next day, and charged with first-degree murder. The young woman had been found seriously injured in Pratte-Lops’s residence and died soon after.
A group of Huard-Boudreault’s friends organized the vigil for Saturday at 8 p.m. at Ozias-Leduc high school, which she attended for a few years. The vigil will take place in the schoolyard near the “ronds jaunes” — a series of concrete blocks where the school friends would meet.
Océane Moyen, a friend and one of the organizers, said there will be a photo of Huard-Boudreault with a message attached and that the evening will be very simple: “Just a place to gather and talk.”
Moyen said the friends felt it was important to get together to pay tribute to her. “We went through things together that we didn’t go through with anyone else. We helped her with her problems and she helped us with ours,” she said, adding that Huard-Boudreault was there for her when she was bullied. The domestic abuse Huard-Boudreault is said to have gone through touches everyone, Moyen said. “To be abused by a boyfriend — there are many women who are not able to admit it. There are many who leave too late, just like her,” she said.
The family is holding a private funeral in McMasterville on Sunday afternoon. Rather than flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the Fondation Le Grand Chemin, which helps young people in difficulty.