Tony Lafleur says the two heart attacks he suffered while detained have changed him.
A man with a long criminal record who was arrested with a loaded and prohibited revolver during the COVID-19 curfew in Montreal three years ago said the two recent heart attacks he suffered while detained have caused him to reflect on his life.
Tony Lafleur, 49, a man with ties to several known street gang members, made the comments Friday at the Montreal courthouse while lawyers argued over what sentence he should receive for the fully loaded 38-calibre handgun found in his possession on March 16, 2021, after Montreal police approached a vehicle he was in with two other people. The gun was wrapped in a blue plastic bag when a police officer frisked Lafleur.
The Mazda 3 was parked behind a residential building on d’Hérelle St. and the police officers approached it because of the curfew imposed by the provincial government as a health measure during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I have seen the deaths of people I was close to. It’s been difficult,” Lafleur said while testifying during his sentence hearing before Quebec Court Judge André Perreault. “I have done no lack of nonsense in my life.”
While detained at the Rivière-des-Prairies Detention Centre, Lafleur suffered two heart attacks since May 2023. He said his poor health, at age 49, has prompted him to take a long, hard look at his past.
“I am nearly 50 years old and I have no souvenir photos of my youth,” Lafleur said. “My biggest problem is that I am no longer 20 years old.”
His defence lawyer, Emilie Guilmain-Serdakowsi, asked that her client be sentenced to a five-year prison term and pointed out that, if you count each day he has served already as a day and a half, he has served more than that.
“His conditions have been difficult,” the attorney said in reference to how Lafleur was behind bars during the worst parts of the COVID-19 pandemic. He spent weeks without being able to shower because of a lack of personnel in provincial jails.
Crown prosecutor Jean-Christofe Ardeneus asked that Lafleur be sentenced to an eight-year prison term overall. He argued Lafleur should be sentenced to six years for possessing the loaded revolver and another two years, to be served consecutively, for breaching a court order, from a previous case, that he not possess any weapons. Ardeneus noted Lafleur was actually subject to four different court orders that he not possess weapons when he was arrested.
“The firearm was (fully) loaded, prohibited and, everything leads us to believe, it was within a criminal context,” the prosecutor said.
It was a reference, in part, to how when Lafleur was arrested his hand was injured and required stitches.
When Lafleur testified on Friday, he said his hand was cut from having slammed a drinking glass down and that it shattered. He said he and the other two men in the Mazda 3 had just returned home to Montreal after visiting a friend in Rimouski when he was arrested. Police found a hammer and bullet-proof vest in the trunk of the vehicle.
When Ardeneus asked Lafleur why he was willing to make a five-hour drive with a cut on his hand that wouldn’t stop bleeding, he said the injury wasn’t a big deal.
Lafleur made several references to having spent much of his life behind bars inside federal penitentiaries. In 1999, he was sentenced to a seven-year prison term after he was convicted of armed robbery. On Oct. 5, 2011, he was sentenced to five years for possession of a loaded and prohibited weapon.
On Nov. 24, 2008, he was sentenced to a 15-month prison term for attempting to intimidate police officers in Quebec City. He took photos of two police officers who were looking for a drug dealer at a hip-hop concert attended by several street gang members from Montreal and Quebec City. While taking the photos, he described himself as “a natural criminal.”
On Dec. 23, 2018, Lafleur hung out with a man named Marc Hilary Dasilma and a street gang member. The following day, Dasilma, 41, was killed by accident when he and a few other people tried to rob a drug dealer named Davis Arbour, 38, in St-Léonard. Lafleur was not charged in the double homicide, but his meeting with Dasilma and the street gang member was mentioned during the trials of other people accused of the homicide.
The hearing will continue Friday afternoon.