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A man who was in a cell next to the one where André Lapierre was killed by Ali Ngarukiye at the Rivière-des-Prairies Detention Centre nearly three years ago told a jury on Thursday that it sounded like the victim was assaulted for more than an hour.
“I knew that there was some kind of confrontation. It wasn’t slapping. It was noises and boom, boom. And it wasn’t stopping,” said Othman Chergui, 42, the witness who testified Thursday at Ngarukiye’s murder trial at the Montreal courthouse.
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Chergui made the comment after prosecutor Louis Bouthillier asked him to describe the noises he heard when he was awakened around 3 a.m. on Sept. 17, 2021. He said the sounds coming from the cell next to his “lasted more than an hour.”
Ngarukiye and Lapierre shared cell S2-228, the one next to a cell where Chergui and another detainee were sleeping. The witness said he was actually stirred from his sleep by the shouting of the other detainees in the same sector.
“Everyone started making noises. Everyone woke up because it’s not normal to hear noise at night,” Chergui said. “Everyone was telling (Ngarukiye) to stop doing it.”
At the start of the trial, Superior Court Justice Myriam Lachance informed the jury that Ngarukiye will argue he was not criminally responsible for Lapierre’s death because of a mental disorder and does not dispute that he killed the 57-year-old man.
Chergui said a prison guard appeared to make a round after the noise stopped and passed by his cell. He said the guard shone a flashlight in his cell and smiled at him before moving on.
On the first day of the trial, the jury was told that Lapierre’s lifeless body was found inside the cell at 6 a.m., about two hours after Chergui heard the sounds. Ngarukiye was found standing up in the cell.
Chergui also said that during the previous evening, Ngarukiye appeared to be agitated and was unable to calm down while visiting the cell Chergui shared with the other man.
“We gave him hashish to calm him down,” Chergui said. “He was weird. We thought that he needed help.”
While being cross-examined by Ngarukiye’s lawyer, Sharon Sandiford, the witness added that the accused “was pumped up” during the visit to his cell.
“He wanted action,” Chergui said. “It’s like I don’t know how to describe it.”
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