‘I forgive you,’ mom tells man convicted in son’s death
In victim impact statement, she tells Charbonneau he should forgive himself
The mother of a young man who was murdered in Lachine four years ago told one of the men charged in the slaying to forgive himself because she had already found a way to do the same.
Dominique Narcisse had to ask Ian Charbonneau, 31, twice to look toward her as she read from a victim impact statement in a Montreal courtroom following his guilty plea to manslaughter and robbery in the Jan. 11, 2014 death of her son Ali Husain Jean.
“Can you look at me, please?” Narcisse asked Charbonneau while he sat in a prisoner’s dock completely sealed off from the rest of the courtroom.
Charbonneau appeared to struggle as he raised his head and looked toward Narcisse.
“Forgiveness can be difficult, but it can also be easy,” Narcisse said. “I hope you will spend your time in jail working on forgiving yourself. You have already admitted (to the homicide), so half of your work is done. I forgive you.”
Minutes later, when Charbonneau was asked if he had anything to add, he muttered: “Everything has been said. I can’t add any more.”
Superior Court Justice Johanne St- Gelais repeated what Narcisse told Charbonneau about 30 minutes later when the judge agreed to a joint recommendation to sentence Charbonneau to an 11-year prison term for manslaughter and a six-year prison term, to be served concurrently, for armed robbery. Details behind how Jean was killed and the motive behind it were placed under a publication ban because another man, Boubacar Bah, 25, remains charged with Jean’s murder. Bah’s case returns to court on Thursday.
St- Gelais said she was moved by what Narcisse told Charbonneau and noted how rare it is to see a close relative of a homicide victim so willing to forgive a person who took part in what happened.
Narcisse also told the court that her son was killed on her birthday. This caused her to fall into a severe depression that prompted her to seek treatment at the Lakeshore General Hospital. She said forgiving Charbonneau was part of the process of recovering from depression.
Narcisse told reporters that her son was killed, inside his apartment on Sherbrooke St., after he realized he had left a second birthday gift for her there. The first gift Jean gave his mother that day was an expensive lasagna pan. She said she balked at how much it would have cost him when she noticed the brand name on the pan.
“He said: ‘Mom, you always put $100 worth of cheese in your lasagna. You should have a pan that can hold it all,’ ” Narcisse recalled.
After he had returned home to get the second gift — a pair of pyjamas — Narcisse and her family began to worry when Jean did not return. Later that same day, she received a call informing her that her son had been taken to a hospital. According to a release issued by the Montreal police in 2014, Jean died at the hospital hours after having been shot at least once in his upper body.
Bah was arrested as a suspect in Jean’s death in 2016 and Charbonneau was arrested in May 2017.