Parents returned Thursday to the Montreal-area daycare where two children died when a bus crashed into the building, stopping to cry and recount the difficult times they witnessed.
André Beaudoin, the father of a 2-year-old boy who attends the center in Laval, said he had to push rubble on Wednesday to help pull injured children from under the bus, which had smashed the front of the building.
“I managed to get four out, the last girl… her head was very bad,” he said.
CANADIAN BUS CRASHES INTO DAYCARE NORTH OF MONTREAL LEAVING 2 CHILDREN DEAD, 6 HOSPITALIZED
Beaudoin said she had just parked to drop off her son when she saw the city bus hurtle toward the day care center. She said she ran into the building and although most of the children had fled, “we heard the screams” of those still trapped.
Two children, both 4 years old, died and six were hospitalized. Pierre Ny St-Amand, a 51-year-old driver for the Laval transit corporation, was arrested at the scene and later charged with two counts of first-degree murder, as well as seven other counts, including attempted murder and aggravated assault.
Large sheets of plywood covered the damaged wall on Thursday, next to a cheery sign in pink letters bearing the center’s name, Garderie Educative Ste-Rose. Piles of debris from the damaged roof and interior lay in the snow.
People, many in tears, stopped to pay their respects and add to the growing memorial of flowers and stuffed toys at a snow bank outside the center where two 4-year-old boys died in the incident.
A woman cries at the scene of a Canadian daycare bus crash that killed two children. (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press via AP)
Two of the six children had been released from the hospital, while four young men remained under treatment, Montreal health officials said.
Montreal’s Sainte-Justine Children’s Hospital said in a statement that the two remaining children were in “favorable” health. Two children remained in a Laval hospital and doctors said their lives were not in danger.
Pierre Ny St-Amand, a 51-year-old driver for the Laval transit corporation, was arrested at the scene on Wednesday. He faces two counts of first-degree murder, as well as seven other charges, including attempted murder and aggravated assault.
Authorities said Thursday they were still trying to understand what might have prompted someone to drive a bus to the daycare.
“The motive remains incomprehensible even today,” Public Safety Minister François Bonnardel told reporters in Quebec City.
MARYLAND TRANSIT BUS CRASHES INTO TRACTOR TRAILER, 1 TAKEN TO HOSPITAL
Asked what the authorities could have done to prevent the incident, Bonnardel said: “Nobody can predict this kind of event. Nobody can predict that someone gets up in the morning, leaves with a bus and decides to hit a nursery school with a bus”. .”
Witnesses said the driver was delirious after getting off the bus, tearing his clothes and screaming as several people held him to the ground until police arrived.
On Wednesday night, a police cruiser and two officers were parked outside St-Amand’s home on a quiet suburban street about six miles from the daycare. Several neighbors described him as a calm and pleasant father of two girls.
One man, Thanh-Ry Tran, said his family met with the St-Amand family several times a year, adding that their wives sometimes helped each other pick up or drop off the children. He said that St-Amand had never shown any signs of distress.
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Lionel Carmant, the government minister responsible for social services, told reporters in Quebec City that regional health officials in Laval found no evidence that St-Armand received care for mental health problems.
