A 51-year-old man drove a city bus into a daycare in Laval, Que., on Wednesday morning, authorities said, killing two children and injuring six more.
Pierre Ny St-Amand, an employee of the Société de transport de Laval (STL), was arrested at the scene.
He has been charged with several crimes, including two counts of first-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault and assault with a weapon or causing bodily harm.
Around 8:30 a.m., the Laval city bus crashed into the Garderie Éducative de Sainte-Rose in the Sainte-Rose neighbourhood on Terrasse Dufferin. There is a bus stop for the 151 line on the roundabout near the daycare.
A neighbour who witnessed the crash said he and a group of parents tried to rescue children pinned under the bus and managed to subdue the driver, who was acting erratically.
Laval police spokesperson Erika Landry said two children are confirmed dead, one at the scene. Urgences-santé confirmed 12 people were injured, including six other children who were recovering in hospital but are expected to survive. One adult was also taken to hospital to be treated for shock.
Dr. Marc Girard, the director of professional services at Sainte-Justine Hospital, said at an afternoon news conference that the hospital received four victims, all preschool-age children, two boys and two girls.
The children were conscious when they arrived at the hospital, but were suffering from various traumatic injuries, Girard said. They are now recovering and in stable condition, he said.
Sébastien Rocheleau, director of medical services at the Laval regional health authority, said the Cité-de-la-Santé Hospital received three patients from the daycare. One child died. The other two are under observation and their injuries are not considered life-threatening. Nathalie Vaillancourt describes the scene at a daycare after a bush crashed into the building Wednesday morning.
Driver was in ‘another world,’ resident says
Hamdi Ben Chaabane, who lives in the neighbourhood and was one of the first on the scene, said the bus must have been travelling 30 or 40 km/h when it struck the daycare.
“From what I saw, it wasn’t an accident,” he said.
After the bus struck the daycare, the driver emerged and began acting erratically.
“He opened the door. He took off all his clothes. He was totally naked,” Ben Chaabane said. “We don’t know why he did that. We dove on him. We tried to subdue him.”
He described the driver as being “in another world.”
“It was a nightmare. It’s horrible. He didn’t stop yelling. He wasn’t saying words,” Ben Chaabane said.
Drone captures bird’s-eye view of Laval daycare bus crash scene
Police created a large perimeter around the Garderie Éducative de Sainte-Rose in Laval, Que., after a city bus crashed into the daycare.
When the group tried to pry children out from underneath the bus, Ben Chaabane said they reached one child, who was only lightly injured, but were unable to reach a girl who was stuck deeper beneath rubble.
He said they continued trying to reach the trapped children until firefighters arrived and told them to leave because the roof of the daycare was caving in.
According to the Stéphane Boyer, the mayor of Laval, the person who was arrested has worked for the STL for 10 years but didn’t have any prior incidents on his record.
“There is a hypothesis that this was an intentional act but it will have to be confirmed by the investigation,” Boyer said, adding that it was unclear if the suspect had any connection to the daycare.
“It’s chaos,” said Julia Moreno, a mother whose child was in the daycare when the bus struck it. “There are injured children. It’s terrible.”
Nathalie Vaillancourt, another mother whose child was inside, said the bus destroyed the front facade of the daycare. Both mothers said their children were unscathed.
Urgences-santé dispatched seven ambulances, a “tactical medical vehicle” — which responds to unusual medical situations, often alongside police — and a rapid response team.
“It’s terrible what happened this morning in Laval,” Premier François Legault told a group of reporters at the National Assembly. “All my thoughts are with the children, with the parents and with the employees.”
Legault said Public Security Minister François Bonnardel, Family Minister Suzanne Roy and Christopher Skeete, the MNA for the Sainte-Rose riding, will be in Laval to assess the situation.
Pierre Ny St-Amand faces charges of murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault and assault with a weapon or causing bodily harm. (Pierre Ny St-Amand/Facebook)
Laval’s mayor said psychologists would be available for those affected.
“It’s a tragic act,” Boyer said. “Obviously there are lots of parents right now wondering if their child was affected. I really want to be there for the families, show support.”
The STL said in a statement it was devastated by the “tragedy in Laval.”
“Our hearts go out to the families and employees affected by this tragedy,” the statement said. “The Service de police de la Ville de Laval is currently conducting an investigation in which we are actively collaborating.”
The bus drivers’ union released a statement this afternoon saying its members are in shock and wholeheartedly support the parents and the daycare workers affected by this “tragic event.” The union says it is co-operating with the authorities investigating the event.
The CISSS de Laval, the regional health board for that city, is inviting anyone who needs psychological help due to Wednesday’s events to contact the province’s telehealth services.
“Anyone who needs psychological help can dial 811, option two. They will be listened to and directed to the right resources,” the health board tweeted.
With files from Chloë Ranaldi, Sarah Leavitt, Radio-Canada
NEW YORK (AP) — Teen smoking hit an all-time low in the U.S. this year, part of a big drop in the youth use of tobacco overall, the government reported Thursday.
There was a 20% drop in the estimated number of middle and high school students who recently used at least one tobacco product, including cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, nicotine pouches and hookahs. The number went from 2.8 million last year to 2.25 million this year — the lowest since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s key survey began in 1999.
“Reaching a 25-year low for youth tobacco product use is an extraordinary milestone for public health,” said Deirdre Lawrence Kittner, director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, in a statement. However, “our mission is far from complete.”
A previously reported drop in vaping largely explains the overall decline in tobacco use from 10% to about 8% of students, health officials said.
The youth e-cigarette rate fell to under 6% this year, down from 7.7% last year — the lowest at any point in the last decade. E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco products among teens, followed by nicotine pouches.
Use of other products has been dropping, too.
Twenty-five years ago, nearly 30% of high school students smoked. This year, it was just 1.7%, down from the 1.9%. That one-year decline is so small it is not considered statistically significant, but marks the lowest since the survey began 25 years ago. The middle school rate also is at its lowest mark.
Recent use of hookahs also dropped, from 1.1% to 0.7%.
The results come from an annual CDC survey, which included nearly 30,000 middle and high school students at 283 schools. The response rate this year was about 33%.
Officials attribute the declines to a number of measures, ranging from price increases and public health education campaigns to age restrictions and more aggressive enforcement against retailers and manufacturers selling products to kids.
Among high school students, use of any tobacco product dropped to 10%, from nearly 13% and e-cigarette use dipped under 8%, from 10%. But there was no change reported for middle school students, who less commonly vape or smoke or use other products,
Current use of tobacco fell among girls and Hispanic students, but rose among American Indian or Alaska Native students. And current use of nicotine pouches increased among white kids.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Alabama man was arrested Thursday for his alleged role in the January hack of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission social media account that led the price of bitcoin to spike, the Justice Department said.
Eric Council Jr., 25, of Athens, is accused of helping to break into the SEC’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter, allowing the hackers to prematurely announce the approval of long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
The price of bitcoin briefly spiked more than $1,000 after the post claimed “The SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges.”
But soon after the initial post appeared, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on his personal account that the SEC’s account was compromised. “The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products,” Gensler wrote, calling the post unauthorized without providing further explanation.
Authorities say Council carried out what’s known as a “SIM swap,” using a fake ID to impersonate someone with access to the SEC’s X account and convince a cellphone store to give him a SIM card linked to the person’s phone. Council was able to take over the person’s cellphone number and get access codes to the SEC’s X account, which he shared with others who broke into the account and sent the post, the Justice Department says.
Prosecutors say after Council returned the iPhone he used for the SIM swap, his online searches included: “What are the signs that you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them.”
An email seeking comment was sent Thursday to an attorney for Council, who is charged in Washington’s federal court with conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud.
The price of bitcoin swung from about $46,730 to just below $48,000 after the unauthorized post hit on Jan. 9 and then dropped to around $45,200 after the SEC’s denial. The SEC officially approved the first exchange-traded funds that hold bitcoin the following day.
Google, Meta and TikTok have removed social media accounts belonging to an industrial plant in Russia’s Tatarstan region aimed at recruiting young foreign women to make drones for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Posts on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok were taken down following an investigation by The Associated Press published Oct. 10 that detailed working conditions in the drone factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, which is under U.S. and British sanctions.
Videos and other posts on the social media platforms promised the young women, who are largely from Africa, a free plane ticket to Russia and a salary of more than $500 a month following their recruitment via the program called “Alabuga Start.”
But instead of a work-study program in areas like hospitality and catering, some of them said they learned only arriving in the Tatarstan region that they would be toiling in a factory to make weapons of war, assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine.
In interviews with AP, some of the women who worked in the complex complained of long hours under constant surveillance, of broken promises about wages and areas of study, and of working with caustic chemicals that left their skin pockmarked and itching. AP did not identify them by name or nationality out of concern for their safety.
The tech companies also removed accounts for Alabuga Polytechnic, a vocational boarding school for Russians aged 16-18 and Central Asians aged 18-22 that bills its graduates as experts in drone production.
The accounts collectively had at least 158,344 followers while one page on TikTok had more than a million likes.
In a statement, YouTube said its parent company Google is committed to sanctions and trade compliance and “after review and consistent with our policies, we terminated channels associated with Alabuga Special Economic Zone.”
Meta said it removed accounts on Facebook and Instagram that “violate our policies.” The company said it was committed to complying with sanctions laws and said it recognized that human exploitation is a serious problem which required a multifaceted approach, including at Meta.
It said it had teams dedicated to anti-trafficking efforts and aimed to remove those seeking to abuse its platforms.
TikTok said it removed videos and accounts which violated its community guidelines, which state it does not allow content that is used for the recruitment of victims, coordination of their transport, and their exploitation using force, fraud, coercion, or deception.
The women aged 18-22 were recruited to fill an urgent labor shortage in wartime Russia. They are from places like Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, as well as the South Asian country of Sri Lanka. The drive also is expanding to elsewhere in Asia as well as Latin America.
Accounts affiliated to Alabuga with tens of thousands of followers are still accessible on Telegram, which did not reply to a request for comment. The plant’s management also did not respond to AP.
The Alabuga Start recruiting drive used a robust social media campaign of slickly edited videos with upbeat music that show African women smiling while cleaning floors, wearing hard hats while directing cranes, and donning protective equipment to apply paint or chemicals.
Videos also showed them enjoying Tatarstan’s cultural sites or playing sports. None of the videos made it clear the women would be working in a drone manufacturing complex.
Online, Alabuga promoted visits to the industrial area by foreign dignitaries, including some from Brazil, Sri Lanka and Burkina Faso.
In a since-deleted Instagram post, a Turkish diplomat who visited the plant had compared Alabuga Polytechnic to colleges in Turkey and pronounced it “much more developed and high-tech.”
According to Russian investigative outlets Protokol and Razvorot, some pupils at Alabuga Polytechnic are as young as 15 and have complained of poor working conditions.
Videos previously on the platforms showed the vocational school students in team-building exercises such as “military-patriotic” paintball matches and recreating historic Soviet battles while wearing camouflage.
Last month, Alabuga Start said on Telegram its “audience has grown significantly!”
That could be due to its hiring of influencers, who promoted the site on TikTok and Instagram as an easy way for young women to make money after leaving school.
TikTok removed two videos promoting Alabuga after publication of the AP investigation.
Experts told AP that about 90% of the women recruited via the Alabuga Start program work in drone manufacturing.
