Pointing fireworks at police can be considered the same as pointing a firearm, a Montreal judge has ruled in finding a protester who pointed fireworks at police during a 2021 protest guilty of several weapons charges and assault.
Montreal police arrested Ripley Lavoie, 30, during the May 1 protest after pointing a fireworks tube toward officers in a Parc Ave. underpass, near the intersection of Parc and Beaumont Ave., Quebec Court judge Dominique Joly wrote.
“Even though the firework was not launched, the evidence is clear that the accused had just taken it out of her bag to put it in her right hand and pointed it towards the bottom of the viaduct, towards the police, the only people in that area at that time,” Joly wrote in her decision last week.
Around the time of Lavoie’s arrest on the train bridge above the underpass, near the boundary between the Mile Ex and Parc Extension neighbourhoods, protesters in the underpass below had set off smoke bombs, planted caltrops — small, four-pronged spikes — and used road construction signs to prevent police from entering the underpass, the judge wrote.
Joly wrote that although fireworks aren’t usually considered firearms, they can become firearms under the Criminal Code when pointed at someone because they can cause serious injuries.
A police officer who followed Lavoie, who was dressed in all black, as she left the other protesters to go up onto the train bridge, testified that a search of her belongings turned up a lighter, a road flare and a container of gasoline.
Joly found Lavoie guilty of four charges: assaulting peace officers — writing that she would have been able to carry out the assault by firing the firework at police if she hadn’t been stopped — pointing a firearm at peace officers, carrying a concealed firearm and possession of a weapon for dangerous purpose.
“The place where the accused was, her clothing, the way she held the firework, what she could see at the bottom of the viaduct, the seized objects she had on her person and in her bag convince the court that she had in her possession explosives and gasoline for a purpose dangerous to the public peace,” the judge wrote. “The court adds that it rejects the claims of the defence that the accused could have wanted to set fire to a garbage can or even herself. All the evidence show a person in position and ready to use a weapon against police officers while there was a protest, smoke bombs had gone off and when the police were the only ones who remained on the street.”
The lawyer who represented Lavoie in court did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.