Johnny Inukpak Tukalak, 35, died in early November of a presumed overdose. The case against a cop charged with assaulting him will proceed.
Quebec’s Crown prosecutor’s office says it is proceeding with a case against a Montreal police officer charged with assaulting an unhoused Indigenous man, despite the complainant having recently died.
Johnny Inukpak Tukalak, 35, was one of two people found unresponsive on a St-Laurent Blvd. corner in early November. Homeless advocates say their deaths are part of a recent wave of presumed overdoses in the city. A coroner is investigating.
With the officer’s assault trial scheduled for January, the Crown confirmed this week that it still intends to try the case.
“Despite the victim’s death, we are continuing with the proceedings based on the evidence we have on file,” Crown prosecutor Lili Prévost-Gravel wrote in an email response.
Officer Williams Bélanger, 27, has pleaded not guilty to one charge of assault causing bodily harm. He is charged under a section of the Criminal Code punishable by summary conviction.
In footage obtained by The Gazette, four officers can be seen escorting Tukalak away from the shelter when Bélanger suddenly pushes him with two hands.
Tukalak falls backward against the concrete, appearing to strike his head. He stops moving upon impact, his legs twisted together and arms splayed out to the side. A separate video of the incident shows Tukalak lying on the concrete, motionless, for at least one minute.
In an interview with The Gazette this summer, Tukalak, originally from Puvirnituq, in northern Quebec, spoke of what transpired that night and appeared determined to see the case through to its end.
“I didn’t expect the cop to push me,” Tukalak said. “I got blacked out and ended up in the hospital.”
According to a lawyer’s letter sent to the city of Montreal on his behalf, Tukalak suffered a fractured skull from the push. He later required surgery and spent two months in hospital due to complications from his injuries.
It was handled by the bureau under its mandate to investigate any criminal allegations against a police officer in which the complainant is Indigenous.
While a victim’s death in a criminal case can complicated matters, a spokesperson for Quebec’s Crown prosecutor’s office said this week it doesn’t automatically bring proceedings to a halt.
When a complainant dies, spokesperson Lucas Bastien said, prosecutors can look to see whether any statements they made before their death can be admitted into evidence.
And depending on the case, Bastien added, “proof of guilt may sometimes also be based on other types of evidence: material, testimonial, documentary, admissions, etc.”
Deaths point to worrying trend in Montreal, shelter says
Word of the two deaths quickly spread across Montreal’s unhoused community during the last two weeks, raising concerns about an increase in unsafe street drugs being in circulation.
Contacted for this article, the Montreal police department said it is awaiting results from a coroner’s investigation into the deaths.
The department said officers were called to the corner of St-Laurent Blvd. and Ontario St. E. shortly after 8 a.m. on the morning of Nov. 2 to assist Urgences-Santé paramedics.
Paramedics had found Tukalak and a woman he was with in cardiorespiratory arrest. They attempted to resuscitate them before rushing them to a local hospital, where they were pronounced dead.
A spokesperson for Quebec’s coroner’s office confirmed it was alerted about the deaths and that a coroner has been assigned to determine the cause and circumstances.
For David Chapman, the executive director of the Resilience Montreal day centre, the deaths point to a worrying trend in the city.
“It gets to this underlying story that we are really seeing a significant increase in unhoused death in the last three or four years,” Chapman said. “And one of the reasons, of course, is fentanyl and the rise of its availability in Quebec.”
In the five months since then, he said, the centre knows of at least eight more people who have died on the city’s streets. Six of those are believed to be due to overdoses.
In contrast, Chapman added, those who work with the unhoused in Montreal used to try to hold a memorial every time someone died — something he says would be unfeasible now.
“It’s as if homeless centres are becoming funeral homes.”