Couture-Rouleau’s father ‘desperate’ to help son: coroner
Coroner’s report says mental health to blame in Couture-Rouleau’s death
The coroner who investigated the circumstances surrounding the October 2014 death of Martin Couture-Rouleau, the man who ran over and killed Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, has filed a report that supports the theory the tragedy had more to do with mental illness than radicalization.
Coroner André Dandavino’s 14page report released late on Friday details the struggle Couture-Rouleau’s family, in particular his father, went through for several months as they tried to get help for him while his mental health clearly grew much worse.
Couture-Rouleau was fatally shot by police after he struck Vincent and another member of the Canadian Armed Forces with the car he was driving. It was apparent that Couture-Rouleau chose his targets because they were wearing military uniforms. In the days following the tragedy, two portraits emerged. One was focused on Couture-Rouleau’s recent conversion to Islam and how he was drawn to radicalization propaganda while the other revealed Couture-Rouleau’s family’s desperate pleas for help.
The coroner’s recommendations indicate Couture-Rouleau did not get the help he needed.
The first recommendation in the report calls on the Haut-Richelieu Hospital, in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, to “re-evaluate its intervention procedures so that people who show signs of mental sickness and signs of radicalization and who show up at the (hospital) be evaluated by a psychiatrist.”
Dandavino also recommends that the Association des médicins psychiatres du Québec, the Collège des médicins and the minister of health and social services do a similar revision of its protocols.
The role of provincial coroner is not to lay blame but to try to find ways to prevent similar deaths from occurring in the future.
Dandavino’s report details a key day — Aug. 27, 2013, when a group of people who had assessed Couture-Rouleau in the previous weeks met at a psychiatry clinic and came to the conclusion he no longer had to be treated because he claimed he no longer needed any help.
Earlier that same month, he had expressed a serious interest in conspiracy theories involving the illuminati, a secret society founded in 1776 that was the subject of the popular book and movie Angels & Demons. Instead of recommending that he continue seeing mental health experts, the clinic “referred him to a mosque in Brossard and one in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu.”
The following day, Couture-Rouleau’s father showed up at the clinic and told staff his son needed help. He recounted how his son was spending a lot of time praying in his basement and on the Internet. The father also described how his son had punched a fridge and broke his bed during fits of anger.
“The father was discouraged and no longer knew what to do. He was advised that the only two conditions that would oblige a person to be given care against his will were if he represented a threat to others or to himself,” Dandavino wrote in his report, while adding that the father was handed a pamphlet for a support clinic in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. At around the same time, Couture-Rouleau found a contact in Pakistan and planned to meet the person in that country. He called his father a demon for questioning his intentions to travel to Pakistan.
A little over a month later, on Oct. 6, 2013, the police in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu were called after Couture-Rouleau barged in on a baptism in a church “and cried out that Christianity is a lie.”
He managed to calm down when the police arrived.
On April 17, 2014, Couture-Rouleau’s father and a member of the staff from the support clinic met with the Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu police to inform them it was clear he had become radicalized. They told the police he wasn’t violent or threatening but was praying at a local mosque five times a day and that his appearance had dramatically changed.
On July 14, 2014, Couture-Rouleau received a notice from the RCMP informing him he would be accused of participating in the activities of a terrorist group after he tried to travel to Turkey, a transfer point to Syria. He was advised to respect a series of conditions and was required to show up in court on Oct. 22, 2014. Two days later, he received a letter stating that the terrorism charge was dropped due to a lack of evidence.
The father was discouraged and no longer knew what to do. He was advised that the only two conditions that would oblige a person to be given care against his will were if he represented a threat to others or to himself. CORONER ANDRÉ DANDAVINO’S REPORT