As Montreal stabbing victim lay dying, ‘I asked him to stay with me,’ police officer testifies at murder trial
Conor Patrick O’Loughlin took a turn for the worse minutes after the first Montreal police officer arrived at the apartment where he was stabbed two years ago, a jury was told on Thursday.
Montreal police Constable William Forget was just two years on the job when he was called to what turned out to be the fatal stabbing of O’Loughlin, a 27-year-old man, on May 18, 2024.
Forget testified Thursday at the Montreal courthouse in the second-degree murder trial of Chad and Jayden Pinel, 22 and 19 respectively.
The Crown’s theory of the case is that early that morning, O’Loughlin knocked on the door of an apartment on St-Antoine St. W. in the Sud-Ouest borough where the Pinel brothers were visiting two young women. Words were exchanged and O’Loughlin went back to his apartment. Minutes later, the Pinel brothers knocked on O’Loughlin’s first-floor apartment door and a fight broke out in front of two of O’Loughlin’s friends.
O’Loughlin was stabbed during the fight and the Pinel brothers fled from the crime scene, prosecutor Philippe Vallières-Roland told the jury when the trial began Wednesday.
Forget told the jury he was on patrol when he and his partner were assigned to go to the apartment building at 3600 St-Antoine W. shortly before 5 a.m.
When they arrived, Forget said, O’Loughlin was lying on the floor of his apartment being tended to by his girlfriend and a friend who was visiting from British Columbia.
“He was conscious and he was breathing,” Forget said. “His eyes were moving and when I entered I noticed that he looked toward me, but I could see he wasn’t doing well. He was very pale.
“I noticed he was having difficulty breathing. He was taking short breaths.”
Forget said he searched through O’Loughlin’s kitchen to find a clean dish towel. He located a cut on the victim’s body and used the towel to apply pressure on it.
At this point, Forget said, O’Loughlin’s friend from B.C. was holding the victim’s head.
“People were around me. They were crying and shouting,” Forget said, adding he made sure that an ambulance had been called. “He was breathing and I asked him to stay with me.”
The police officer recalled how, at one moment, O’Loughlin’s girlfriend placed her hand under his neck.
“Then she said that his neck was lowering fast. At that moment I noticed he was having difficulty breathing. I tried to wake him up, but I noticed that his head was becoming much heavier in my hand,” he said, adding he was about to begin efforts to revive O’Loughlin when ambulance technicians arrived.
The police officer said he advised the ambulance technicians that O’Loughlin was breathing when he arrived, but that he seemed to stop.
Forget said several efforts were made to revive O’Loughlin before he was brought to the Montreal General Hospital in an ambulance and brought into a trauma room.
At 5:45 a.m., almost an hour after Forget and his partner got the first call, a doctor informed them that O’Loughlin had died.
Before Forget testified Thursday morning, the jury was shown a series of videos. One series showed the Pinel brothers gambling at what appeared to be a blackjack table at the Montreal Casino, hours before O’Loughlin was killed.
A surveillance camera positioned outside the apartment building showed them arriving from the casino with two women who resided there. The same camera recorded images of the brothers leaving the building after O’Loughlin was stabbed.
The two women the brothers were visiting were recorded holding an entrance door to the building so the ambulance technicians could enter.
The jury also saw images of the efforts first responders made to revive O’Loughlin outside the apartment building and before he was placed in an ambulance.
Editor’s Picks
The post As Montreal stabbing victim lay dying, ‘I asked him to stay with me,’ police officer testifies at murder trial appeared first on Montreal Gazette.