Family says police slow to investigate alleged racial attack near Montreal

By Dan Spector  Global News Posted December 28, 2023 7:39 am

A Montreal-area mother is expressing rage and horror about an alleged racially motivated attack against her 18-year-old daughter and three other young women.
Lyndia Barthold says the four women were sitting in a parked car in Terrebonne, north of Montreal, when a man started swinging an axe at a closed window and screaming racial slurs.
She claims Terrebonne police initially did not take the case seriously because the victims are black.
“This is a situation that caused me tears every second that I think about it,” Barthold said at a press conference.
The mother and Terrebonne home owner says she’s experienced racism living in Quebec plenty of times, but never anything nearly as horrific as what her daughter Destiny and her three friends went through on the night of Nov. 21.
“I’ve been feeling really depressed, really sad. I haven’t been feeling like myself,” Destiny said.
Barthold and civil rights group The Red Coalition say Destiny was sitting in the passenger seat of her friend’s car in the driveway of Barthold’s home on de la Matamec Street in Terrebonne.
“Straight out of the pages of a Hollywood horror script, a man in a hoodie and a ski mask brandishing an axe and knife accosted these girls,” said founder and executive director of the Red Coalition Joel Debellefeuille.
Berthold says the four girls froze in horror as the man allegedly hurled threats and racial slurs at them.
“He told them, ‘If you guys don’t go back where you came from, get the hell out of my neighbourhood, I’m going to kill you,” said Berthold.
They claim he suddenly started smashing the passenger side window with an axe.
“They drove off. When they drove off, he was still running after them with the axe and the knife,” the mother said.
Barthold says when she arrived on the scene she called 911, but that police didn’t seem to take the case as seriously as she expected.
“They did not give me their cards, not even a number for me to call to have any follow up. I really had to keep calling, keep trying to call different places,” she recounted.
The girls had seen the man enter a home on their street. For three weeks, they wondered if they’d run into him again.
Berthold says she finally called The Red Coalition who wrote a letter to the police and all levels of government, and things accelerated after that.
“No investigator was appointed to this case until the Red Coalition got involved,” said Alain Babineau, director of racial profiling and public
safety for the Red Coalition.
According to the Red Coalition, 10 days after that a man in his 50s was arrested. The crown prosecutors told Global News no charges have yet been laid.
Barthold says she’s afraid in her own home.
“I’m expecting this place to be my peace, you know, but now this is my hell,” she said.
Terrebonne and its police force are already facing a civil lawsuit in a racial profiling case. Barthold thinks if the victims were white, police would have acted faster.
“I’m pretty sure the same night they would they would have went on a hunt and they would find him, you know?” she said.
Terrebonne police did not respond to requests for comment.