LAVAL — The man accused of killing two young children and injuring six more was likely experiencing psychosis the moment he rammed a city bus into a Montreal-area daycare, a psychiatrist told a courtroom on Monday.
Pierre Ny St-Amand experienced a "break in contact with reality" and later appeared to have no recollection of his actions on Feb. 8, 2023, psychiatrist Kim Bédard-Charette testified.
"We’re not able to talk to him. He doesn’t answer commands. He’s in his own world," she told the first day of the trial in Laval, Que., describing the psychosis.
Ny St-Amand, 53, was arrested after the bus he was driving crashed into the front of the daycare, killing a four-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl. He is facing two counts of second-degree murder, as well as charges of assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm in relation to six other children who were injured.
Both the Crown and defence have told the Quebec Superior Court judge that they would present the facts of Ny St-Amand's case jointly, and that the accused should be found not criminally responsible for his actions, a conclusion two experts had independently reached.
Bédard-Charette's testimony and her report on the accused's mental condition provided the first clues into what may have motivated a bus driver with no criminal record, no documented history of psychiatric treatment and seemingly no family or work problems to suddenly commit an act of extreme violence.
She said Ny St-Amand had recently experienced stressors in his life, including the illness of a father figure who was diagnosed with dementia. Furthermore, the accused had planned to marry his partner, a process that required him to produce legal documents about his early years and forced him, she said, into reliving long-repressed memories of his childhood in Cambodia marked by abuse, war, and the death of his parents.
Bédard-Charette said that these stressors were likely too much for Ny St-Amand, who had always struggled to express his emotions and had sought to repress his childhood trauma. "Always using the same defences, it's like an elastic that we've pulled too much that eventually snaps," she said.
Her report noted behaviour after his arrest that she said supported her diagnosis, including a "variable mental state" that showed him to appear lucid at times, and confused and delirious at others.
There were some questions that she couldn't answer, including why Ny St-Amand targeted the daycare, or why his psychotic episode started when it did, several hours into an uneventful shift as a bus driver. "I can't explain it," she said.
Earlier in the day, the Quebec courtroom watched with a mixture of tears and horrified silence as a video was shown of the moment the city bus rammed into the daycare. The video, filmed by cameras inside the bus, shows the crash from the perspective of Ny St-Amand as he made a hard turn into the driveway of the garderie éducative Ste-Rose and accelerated, engines revving, into the building's side.
The video cuts out after the impact, and in the courtroom the sound of crying broke the silence.
Ny St-Amand, who wore a grey sweater and appeared with his hands handcuffed in front of him, watched calmly on Monday as video of the crash played on a television suspended from the ceiling. Earlier, as the trial opened, he stood as the charges were read and, in a low voice, confirmed his not guilty plea.
In a summary of facts read by a prosecutor, the court heard that Ny St-Amand never hit the brakes as he headed down the driveway. Instead, he sped up. "Once in a straight line into the parking lot, he accelerates toward the west side of the building," the prosecutor said.
Ny St-Amand had been assigned the bus route by an automatic system and had not requested it, the trial heard. A video from the bus cameras, taken earlier in the morning of the crash, showed Ny St-Amand picking up and dropping off passengers in a normal way.
After the crash, Ny St-Amand stood inside the mangled bus and removed his pants, underwear and boots, speaking and yelling incoherently. He was grabbed by two parents, who held him until police arrived, according to the statement of facts.
Superior Court Justice Éric Downs is presiding over the hearings and will make the final decision on Ny St-Amand's criminal responsibility after the trial, which is expected to wrap up Tuesday.
Some of the people who had been present at the crash told reporters outside the courtroom on Monday that the day's evidence was hard to watch. Mike Haddad, one of the parents who helped subdue the suspect, said it was troubling to see the video and Ny St-Amand's reaction.
"To see the accused with no remorse or nothing at all in his eyes, it's shocking," Haddad said. He added that the likely verdict of not criminally responsible was "difficult to accept" for families.
"If it's not this person who should go to prison, then who should?" he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 7, 2025.
Morgan Lowrie, The Canadian Press
