Lawyer for Quebec truck attack accused says pedestrian deaths were an accident

Steeve Gagnon is escorted by police into court in Amqui, Que., Tuesday, March 14, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot

RIMOUSKI — The lawyer for a Quebec man charged with killing three people with his truck told a jury Wednesday the deaths were an accident.

Court heard during final arguments that Steeve Gagnon reached down to grab an e-cigarette pod and accidentally drove off the road.

Lawyer Hugo Caissy told jurors that Gagnon’s story was “reckless, but not implausible” and that his client should be acquitted.

Gagnon is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and the attempted murder of nine other people in March 2023 in Amqui, northeast of Quebec City.

Caissy said the truck drove onto the sidewalk in five different spots, including two where no pedestrians were present.

The lawyer told the jury that even if they conclude Gagnon acted deliberately, there is not enough evidence to show his act was premeditated.

Court heard last week that Gagnon told a psychiatrist he dropped something in his truck cab and denied any intention of striking people.

The psychiatrist said Gagnon recounted seeing the carnage and hearing people yell that he had struck pedestrians.

He told the court Gagnon likely suffered from persecutory delusions for several years, but it wasn’t a factor in March 2023.

Gagnon’s testimony during trial was marked by expletive-laden tirades against the prosecution, the judge and the jurors — so much so that he was ordered out of the room at times.

Caissy addressed videos made by Gagnon in which he referred to the possibility of hitting children with his vehicle as “an expression of his delusional ideas,” and said they could not be seen as evidence of premeditation.

In his own final arguments, prosecutor Simon Blanchette rejected the accident theory, reminding the jury that at least two witnesses saw Gagnon’s face behind the wheel and one reported he was smiling.

Instead, Blanchette painted the accused as an angry and frustrated man who was jobless, unhappy with life and struggling with money problems and health issues.

Gagnon’s actions, he said, were intentional and premeditated.

Blanchette replayed parts of the videos Gagnon made on his cellphone two days before, in which he described how he would run down dozens of children with his truck in three Amqui schools and then go wait at the police station.

Gagnon drove to a schoolyard just before the fatal drive, Blanchette said, but it was empty since there were no classes that day.

“He adapted his plan to the circumstances and he then put it into execution by hitting people on St-Benoît boulevard instead,” the prosecutor said.

Blanchette said Gagnon’s actions echoed the plan he’d outlined in the video, including going to the police station after the fatal event. He also noted that Gagnon hit pedestrians in three separate spots.

Gagnon, according to the prosecution, “developed a plan to take revenge on society.”

“He carried out this plan with the adaptations necessary to the circumstances and killed three people that day in a premeditated and deliberate manner, in addition to having attempted to kill nine others,” Blanchette said.

Superior Court Justice Louis Dionne will deliver instructions to the jury Thursday, after which they’ll begin deliberations.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 18, 2025.

— By Pierre Saint-Arnaud in Montreal

The Canadian Press