The Gazette’s Paul Cherry writes about Benoît L’Écuyer, the SPVM officer who was shot dead in 2002 and had been the last SPVM cop killed on duty till Monday’s shooting.
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Kate
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Kate
The name of the alleged shooter from Monday has been revealed: Seth Scott Hatfield, a 25‑year‑old from Lethbridge, Alberta, where a search is being carried out Tuesday in a house there. His name also appears on a lengthy manifesto found in a hotel room from which he presumably began shooting.
(CTV has started autoplaying commercials over their news pages, so be warned.)
Ian
How is he “alleged”? To say that doesn’t even make sense in l legal terms. He did it, his culpability is up gir discussion technically but the simple fact of the action is clear.
qatzelok
Someone killed a cop a day after the mayor mentionned how bad the police were to her husband, and now we have an invisible suspect who is also silent.
Where are the photos of the dead suspect?
Kate
Ian, the headline to that piece reads “Alleged police shooter identified” – in journalism, until someone is convicted in a court of law, it’s safest to “allege” although I’m not entirely sure this remains necessary when the “alleged” is also dead and thus no trial can take place.
Nicholas
Tricky here. Shooting is not necessarily a crime; I’ve seen “alleged driver John Doe hits pedestrian”, even when it’s clear he was a driver. Also you can’t live a dead person, so alleged isn’t legally necessary. And as you say, charges can’t ever be laid; civil suits against the estate could be, but that wouldn’t let you say murderer, like OJ. (Though lots of people called him a murderer anyway.)
Mark Côté
Guessing this is not going to be labelled as terrorism despite his manifesto’s clear political ideology.
Kate
I saw terrorism mentioned at first, but not so much by Wednesday.
But it’s a question of definition. Is it always terrorism when a heinous act is committed for ideological reasons? Or does terrorism imply that there’s some sort of cause which the assailant feels he is supporting by his actions?
In a case like Hatfield’s, it feels like he was a solitary person who became fixated on certain ideas and felt there was some logic in carrying out carnage.
Rebel Media has the entire manifesto and I’ve located it, from curiosity, but not downloaded it nor do I plan to waste time reading it. But people who study psychopathology may end up mining something out of it that clarifies what Hatfield thought he was doing.
I doubt it will be called terrorism.
H. John
Prof. Tandeep Sidhu, U of Manitoba, writes:
“Ian Lafrenière, Québec’s domestic safety minister, said just hours after the shooting that it wasn’t linked to terrorism.
This statement is troubling not just because it was made prematurely, in the early stages of the investigation, but also because it contradicted media reporting that outlines the shooter’s grievances in a manifesto linked to the “involuntary celibacy” or “incel” movement. There is growing evidence of an ideological dimension to the shooting.”His article:
The Montréal shooting spotlights the growing public safety threat of online radicalization
H. John
@Kate asks “Is it always terrorism when a heinous act is committed for ideological reasons?”
I think it’s still an open question in this case.
Canadian authorities increasingly treat violent incel ideology as a form of ideologically motivated violent extremism.
In 2020, the RCMP and federal prosecutors treated the Toronto “Incel Rebellion” machete killing as a terrorism case—the first known Canadian terrorism prosecution based on incel ideology rather than religious or nationalist extremism. The theory was that the attack was motivated by an ideological cause and intended to intimidate or influence a broader population.
qatzelok
“He was part of the Incel movement” means “He killed someone because he couldn’t get laid.”
Who invents these stories, high school football jocks?
We are an increasingly gullible public.
bob
@Kate @H. John – Rebel News published his manifesto (their take on it is characteristically moronic), and it is very explicitly a call to similar minded people to do terrorist violence with the intention of creating a sad and bizarre incel regime. Though he was a twit, this thing does lay out an ideology, with a mythology, principles, and a call to action based on those. @qatzelok has it pretty much nailed – I won’t quote the thing, and just say it is exactly what one would expect. Just because it is idiotic does not mean it is not a terrorist ideology or that this was not a terrorist act.
Joey
They won’t call it terrorism because if the patriarchy accepts that murderous acts grounded in a generalized hatred of women constitute terrorism then a lot of what passes for standard social/political/cultural points of view will be a little too terrorism-adjacent for us to grapple with.
I cannot overstate the number of statements, emails, etc., put out by local and national Jewish community organizations since Monday, even while the situation was still ongoing, simply on the basis that the shooting occurred in a relatively Jewish neighbourhood – the reflex assumption by many in my community was that the killer was an anti-Semite shooting at Jews indiscriminately. (Quite a few of these organizations have not corrected the record or expressed solidarity with the intended (women) and other actual (Muslim police officer) targets/victims.) Anyway, it’s not hard to imagine (justifiably so) that if the killer were targeting Montreal’s Jewish community there would be less of a semantic debate about whether the incident constitutes terrorism. But because the motivation was misogyny, suddenly we are very dismissive that this can be terrorism.
All this being said, the big red sign is flashing “mental health” and “access to guns” IMO.
bob
@Joey – You are right about the jumping to conclusions, though it was a good guess considering that two schools have been shot at in the same neighbourhood, and an attempt was made recently to set fire to a synagogue. Then they ran with the ball, though the play was over, and seem to still be running, out of the arena, down the street, etc.
Jews are not the focus of this manifesto, but there is an antisemitic conspiracy theory at the root of his anticapitalism: “The influence of Zionist Jews upon the western bourgeoisie is in fact so strong that in my other works I sometimes refer to the western ruling class itself as the Judaeo-bourgeois class”. Then he does a “not all Jews” hedge. Not far off from the left wing these days. And he did name “influential Zionists” and “corporations with ties to Zionism” as “class A” targets for violence, among many others, “who actually need and deserve to be liquidated”. Replace “liquidated” with a less violent form of erasure like “boycotted”, and it’s DSA policy.
MarcG
aaaand that’s why posts related to Israel have comments turned off.
jeather
I’m sorry, but you can’t replace “murdered violently” with “boycotted” and say that other than that minor wording change two policies are the same.
qatzelok
Remember when we were all trying to “make sense” about Tower 7 falling and the Terrorists’ Passports that were miraculously “found” in the rubble of 911?
I think this is a similar story with liars contributing lots of flimsy evidence that other liars are pretending to believe.
bob
@jeather – How so? The DSA officially supports al thawabet, which says literally “liquidate the occupation”, by which they mean “the liberation of all occupied Arab territories”. The ultimate goal of the ostracism is erasure, and Zionists anywhere are considered legitimate targets of “resistance”.
DSA resolution, passed August 2025: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uVRuqCw1UKgNmurmCWvswerswEHHmkJ4UyXo8zvCVaM/edit?tab=t.1434oz5dc0io
al thawabet (Palestine National Council, 13th Session: Political Declaration): https://www.palquest.org/en/historictext/16268/palestine-national-council-13th-session-political-declaration
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Kate
Tennis Canada plans a new stadium in Jarry Park, which makes me wonder: isn’t there some other part of town where they could build without claiming more of the green space that’s in such short supply in Villeray‑Park Ex?
This dream stadium will have a retractable roof. Magic words, those.
Joey
The baseball field they want to take over is one of the nicer ones in the park – scoreboard, etc., IIRC.
SMD
Yes, that baseball diamond was renovated under Coderre for hosting the Jeux du Québec. I find it strange that at no point during the seven years of consultation, which led to the City’s Plan Directeur released last summer, Tennis Canada thought it would be pertinent to mention taking over that ballpark for their new stadium. Just zero good faith from these people. And of course, a complete reliance of public funds to pay for it. So that’s a non-public, non-accountable organisation occupying public land and announcing that they are going to take more of it through the media, instead of engaging with the public consultation process, and presuming that the massive costs will be borne by — the public! Talk about gall.
Kate
SMD, can you keep me posted about any protests or actions on this?
Any point in communicating with the borough mayor or councillors, or are they powerless in this matter?
Joey
Thanks, SMD. I had heard a few years ago that the city was hell-bent on getting rid of the parking lot, which struck me as (a) a bad idea, since LOADs of families rely on it to schlep sports gear, picnic gear, BBQs, etc., to the park, and (b) impossible given the inevitable parking needs of the tennis tournament attendees. I’m guessing that the SMF administration will allow no such thing; you can understand maybe why Tennis Canada would have bypassed a Projet-led consultation and is now ready to make moves under a more ‘aligned’ administration.
su
Villeray has over 8,700 people per square kilometer. Because so many apartments house large, multi-generational families without private backyards, the usage of every single square meter of grass in Jarry Park is multiplied.
A resident in Villeray has less than half the park space of the average Montrealer, and one-tenth of what provincial health guidelines recommend for urban spaces.SMD
@Kate, if you’re not already a Friend of Jarry Park I recommend becoming one. Memberships are free and their newsletter and advocacy are excellent: http://www.capjarry.org. For example, less than two weeks ago they launched a petition to save the pool that already has over 2,500 signatures: http://www.change.org/piscine_du_parc_Jarry. @su is correct that Jarry Park is an essential green space for the crowded residents of Villeray and Park Ex (which has 19,944 people per square kilometer!).
I wouldn’t discount the pressure on borough officials. As one of the five “Grands Parcs” Jarry Park is planned by the city and maintained by the borough, but if local councillors feel the heat they will pass it on to the Mayor and executive committee. Tennis Canada’s current media strategy is part of high-level negotiations with the City, feds and province, and if there is public pushback these partners will get cold feet (especially in a provincial election year). I think Joey is right about the timing; this never would have gotten past the boardroom in a Plante administration (and we know, because Tennis Canada has floated this trial balloon many times before, basically every year after the tournament).
Joey
@SMD I suspect also that Tennis Canada is worried that the Saputos will succeed in getting Quebec to pony up big dough to reconfigure the inside of the Big O to serve as a semi-permanent home base once the MLS switches to a winter schedule.
The silver lining for the tennis thing is that the courts are available to regular citizens for fun and practice when the tournament isn’t on, and Canada/Montreal has strong tennis players who would benefit from more and better facilities. Whereas spending hundreds of millions to renovate the interior of the stadium would basically amount to a handout to Joey S., who is only worth five or six billion on his own…
DavidH
@Joey, they still plan on getting rid of most of the parking lot. The city plans to destroy the current outdoor swimming pool and build a new one where the parking lot is. The plan is super expensive and made very little sense until now. (See the link for the petition in SMD’s latest post).
Joey
Thanks DavidH, I thought they wanted to move the pool closer to the wading pool… maybe the City could work out some deal where residents could park in the Hydro-Quebecs along Esplanade after business hours.
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Kate
Notes on what’s open and closed on Wednesday for Saint‑Jean.
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Kate
Why was Monday’s shooter aiming out of a window of the Hilton on Decarie? Police say the shooter’s manifesto included denunciations of pornography, and suggest that his purpose may have been to carry out an attack on Pornhub. He succeeded in blowing out several windows in the complex,
directly across Decarie from the hotel,before police arrived and he turned his attention to them.steph
Aren’t the mindgeek offices in the “triangle” near Pare, while this was south of the tracks?
Kate
Could the SPVM and La Presse both be in error?
Jimmy
Aylo (formally Mindgeek) moved their offices down the street to that building across from the Hilton.
Chris
Imagine planning such a thing, and scrawling 100 pages, but not googling where Aylo is now.
Kate
If he’d just arrived in town he may not have realized
the entire Decarie trench sits between the hotel and the Aylo complex either.But obviously I wasn’t aware the buildings were side by side either!
MarcG
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the angle y’all are coming from but the Hilton and the current Aylo offices appear to be right next to each other, not across the Decarie… https://maps.app.goo.gl/1oKeUcW7XHAnuH949
roberto
Jimmy is correct. Steph`s info is old.
dhomas
I have a friend who used to work at Aylo (when it was Mindgeek). He still knows people there. The offices have indeed moved to spot directly across from the Hilton where the shooter was, as Jimmy mentioned.
Ian 16:48 on 2026-06-23 Permalink
I guess there’s no point talking about whatever person the cops mistakenly shot last because it happens way more often
Kate 18:46 on 2026-06-23 Permalink
I saw one photo of the hundreds of police who marched in uniform into Notre‑Dame for L’Écuyer’s funeral. We’re not likely to see that for Mohamed Benredouane.