Quebec coroner criticizes police search for 13-year-old girl

MONTREAL – A Quebec coroner said police in Lévis did not take appropriate steps in their search for 13-year-old Maëlyne Lugez, who was found dead in a creek near her school in November 2024.

In a report published Sept. 14, coroner Luc Malouin questioned why officers suspended ground searches overnight, during a period when Lugez may still have been alive.

Malouin found police focused too heavily on the fact that Lugez was considered suicidal and failed to adequately account for another part of her profile: she was a missing 13-year-old child. Search guidance for children her age called for a more intensive search of isolated areas, he said.

Lugez disappeared on Nov. 6 after leaving school during her lunch break and failing to return for her afternoon classes. The school contacted her father before calling police.

Police in Lévis, south of Quebec City, initially searched a 300-metre perimeter around the school and unsuccessfully tried to locate Lugez through her cellphone, which had been turned off.

Malouin questioned whether police developed “tunnel vision” after those efforts failed. Lévis police testified that 95 per cent of missing youths are quickly found through searches within 300 metres and cellphone geolocation.

Police suspended the ground search at about 9:15 p.m. because of darkness and fatigue, though investigators continued working on the case overnight.

The search resumed the following morning. Lugez was found at about 1:20 p.m. on Nov. 7 in a creek about 700 metres from her school, with her face submerged in the water. She was later declared dead at the hospital.

One investigator testified that reducing the police presence can sometimes allow a suicidal person to return on their own.

“That is true for a suicidal person, but here, in addition to being suicidal, she was a 13-year-old child,” Malouin wrote.

Search guidance for missing children between 13 and 15 called for isolated areas to be “flooded with mobile resources,” Malouin said. He found officers should have considered both profiles when deciding how to conduct the search.

Lugez’s family and school staff believed she was in the woods and repeatedly called for a police dog to be used, according to the report.

“At 9 p.m., with the ground search at an impasse, why wasn’t that possibility considered?” Malouin wrote.

The report stated that a police dog handler testified that the quiet evening would have been an excellent time to search the wooded area.

Quebec provincial police offered the services of a police dog handler and its emergency measures division, but the Lévis police official in charge declined the offer, preferring to wait until morning.

Malouin concluded that Lugez drowned accidentally and did not intend to take her own life. He wrote that the young girl’s death ”likely occurred late in the evening of November 6 or early in the following night.”

Malouin recommended that Lévis police update officers’ knowledge of ground-search practices and that provincial police better inform other forces about the specialized services they offer.

In a statement, Lévis police said they are reviewing the report.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 15, 2026.