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Two young men pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter for their involvement in an Old Montreal building fire that killed a woman and her daughter in October 2024.
Justin Fortier-Trahan, 22, and Juventino Hernandez Pelaez, 20, appeared at a Montreal courthouse on Tuesday. Fortier-Trahan admitted to setting fire to the building on Notre-Dame Street E. shortly after 2 a.m. on Oct. 4, 2024.
He took a photo or video of the flames before escaping in a getaway car driven by Hernandez Pelaez. The building housed a restaurant on the main floor and a hostel above it.
Léonor Géraudie, 43, and her daughter, Vérane Reynaud-Géraudie, 7, died in the fire. They were visiting Montreal from France.
Fortier-Trahan and Hernandez Pelaez were initially charged with second-degree murder following their arrest about a week after the fire.
People found guilty of manslaughter in Canada can still face life imprisonment, but Crown prosecutor Louis Bouthillier says that by taking the plea, the two avoided a mandatory life sentence that comes with a murder conviction.
“It would have been a hard-fought case,” said Bouthillier, adding that a second-degree murder charge requires proving criminal intent beyond a reasonable doubt.
“The fact of the matter was that there was no sign telling the bystanders that a hotel was there on the premises, so it made our job a little difficult.”
Men plead guilty to 5 charges in total
At the time of the fire, 23 other people were inside the building. Two were injured, including one critically. It took firefighters over 15 hours to tackle the blaze, according to the agreed statement of facts presented in court.
On top of the two manslaughter charges, Fortier-Trahan and Hernandez Pelaez pleaded guilty to three arson charges.
One of those is in connection with a café the pair attempted to set fire to in Verdun just a couple of hours before arriving in Old Montreal. Damages in that case were minor, and no one was inside the building at the time.
The same café was set on fire again the next day. The statement of facts says there isn’t any proof connecting the two fires, but the circumstances show the business was being targeted.
The judge at the preliminary hearing believed that Fortier-Trahan and Hernandez Pelaez had been contracted to set both the building and café on fire on the night of Oct. 3-4, Bouthillier says.
“One of the accused had a prior conviction for setting a car on fire, and it was in the same year that he was charged in our case, so it’s obviously an aggravating factor,” said Bouthillier, adding that he will lean on that during sentencing.
Fortier-Trahan and Hernandez Pelaez will return to court on Dec. 16.
A Quebec coroner has been named to lead a public inquiry into the October 2024 fire as well as another fire that took place in March 2023, also in Old Montreal, that claimed the lives of seven people. That fire, which involved Airbnbs inside a heritage building, spurred the city’s crackdown on short-term rentals.
Coroner Géhane Kamel is leading both inquiries, though a timeline hasn’t been set yet for either.