Court guards criticized over Maniwaki confrontation

As an 18-year-old man lay in hospital Thursday, a gunshot wound to his head, one expert was questioning whether a shocking encounter at the Maniwaki courthouse should have ended much differently.

Quebec authorities are reviewing the events that led a special constable to shoot Steven Bertrand, 18, on Wednesday.

“What I saw in that video was multiple officers in that area, not effectively controlling — physically controlling — the situation,” said Seth Stoughton, a former U.S. police officer who now teaches law.

The teenager is now in the Hôpital de Hull, where Quebec’s police watchdog says he is out of danger.

His mother, Julie Bertrand, who was in the courthouse and heard her son being shot, told reporters Thursday that her son was in a medically induced coma. The bullet, she said, did not hit his brain but travelled through his face and toward his neck. “My son is strong,” she said on her Facebook page, where she also posted pictures of her son in his hospital bed. His face appears badly bruised and he is intubated.

The man was attending the Maniwaki courthouse around 1 p.m. Wednesday when he got into an altercation with a special constable.

Julie Bertrand said her son was defending himself during the altercation, and was hit with a guard’s baton before Christopher Lacaille, Bertrand’s cousin, began to film the scene on his cellphone.

His Facebook video has now been viewed more than 1.8 million times.

It shows Bertrand and the officer wrestling in the waiting room as others, apparently court staff, watch. According to the preliminary findings of the BEI, Bertrand managed to grab the special constable’s telescopic baton and hit him on the head with it. The constable then took out his gun and shot him in the head.