Ruling in 2026 on high-risk offender status for man in fatal Quebec daycare crash

MONTREAL – A Superior Court judge says he will rule in 2026 on whether to assign high-risk offender status to a Quebec man who killed two children and injured six others when he drove a city bus into a Montreal-area daycare in 2023.

Justice Éric Downs made the comments Thursday at the Laval, Que., courthouse after he listened to final arguments from the prosecution and defence in the case of Pierre Ny St-Amand.

In April, Downs ruled that Ny St-Amand was not criminally responsible for the attack because he had likely been in psychosis when he crashed a bus into a daycare in Laval, killing a four-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl.

Now the judge has to decide whether to declare the man a high-risk offender, a designation sought by the Crown that would impose stricter rules on him while he is detained at a psychiatric hospital. 

The Crown says Ny St-Amand’s actions were so brutal that he must be considered high-risk, but his lawyers say the status reinforces the stereotype of the “criminal lunatic” who can never be rehabilitated. 

The defence wants the judge to strike down the section of the Criminal Code that allows courts to label certain people deemed not criminally responsible as high-risk. 

Earlier this week, the president of the province’s mental health review board testified that 17 people have been designated high-risk offenders in Quebec since 2014, and 12 still have that status. 

The parties will return to court on Dec. 12, because the judge must issue a detention order every 30 days while Ny St-Amand waits for a more definitive ruling on his fate. Downs did not give a date when he expects to rule, saying only that he won’t be ready before the holidays.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2025.