Home > News

Police officer charged in connection with September death of Quebec City cyclist

Simon Beaulieu, a police officer in Quebec City, Que., has been charged with criminal negligence causing death and dangerous driving causing death, after fatally colliding with a cyclist nearly a year ago.

The fatal incident happened at the corner of Rue Du Parvis and Rue St-Francois, Quebec City. (Image: Google Maps)
The fatal incident happened at the corner of Rue Du Parvis and Rue St-Francois, Quebec City. (Image: Google Maps)

Simon Beaulieu, a police officer in Quebec City, Que., has been charged with criminal negligence causing death and dangerous driving causing death, after fatally colliding with a cyclist nearly a year ago.

The cyclist, Guy Blouin, died in the hospital hours after the incident.

According to reports, Blouin was biking the wrong way near the corner of Rue du Parvis and Rue St-Francois on September 3, 2014, when Beaulieu moved to respond. In the process, Blouin was knocked down by Beaulieu’s patrol car and pulled under the wheels, before the police car backed up over the 48-year-old cyclist’s body, witnesses said. When Beaulieu exited his vehicle to place Blouin under arrest, the victim, eyewitnesses grimly observed, was “spitting blood.”

“They ran over the guy,” sources told CBC News after the incident “The guy ended up under the car. For an entire 15 seconds, he was under the tire in a fetal position.” Mulitple witnesses, the Daily Mail reported, saw police exit the vehicle to find Blouin under the tires, before getting back inside and driving over him a second time.

In response, Quebec provincial police launched an investigation, with which the Quebec City police department, they said, fully co-operated. With the charges filed, Beaulieu has been relegated to an administrative role, forbidden from operating an emergency vehicle while the case is ongoing.

Blouin’s death last September shocked the local cycling community, triggering widespread outrage with protests and vigils springing up in the days and weeks that followed the incident. Some of the groups at the vanguard of those events called the charges a welcome thing, but openly wondered why, in the case of a police officer killing a cyclist, it took so long to get to this point.

“I find it hard to believe it took almost a year for whomever’s in charge to finally determine that somebody is guilty of those things, or that he should be charged,” said Pierre Frappier with Comité des Citoyens de St-Roch, in conversation with the CBC. Groups such as Frappier’s, as well as Quebec City yclists in general, will no doubt be watching the case unfold as Bealieu’s trial begins on October 16.