Police investigating threat against Echaquan family during outing in Trois-Rivières

TROIS-RIVIÈRES, Que. — Police in Trois-Rivières, Que., say they are investigating a criminal harassment complaint filed by a member of Joyce Echaquan’s family who was allegedly threatened in town on Friday.

Sgt. Luc Mongrain says officers met with the complainant immediately after the alleged incident to draft her complaint and collect information to identify the suspect.

Police provided no details of the complaint, and no arrests have been made so far.

The Atikamekw Nation Council says in a statement that an individual threatened the oldest member of the Echaquan Dubé family during an outing in Trois-Rivières after the adjournment of a coroner’s hearing on Joyce Echaquan’s death in hospital last year.

Calling the event “unacceptable,” the council says police were quick to reassure family members that hate speech does not reflect the feelings of Trois-Rivières residents, a view it says the family shares.

The alleged threat is the latest blow against a family that has sat through a week of traumatic details emerging from a Quebec coroner’s inquest into the circumstances of Echaquan’s death on Sept. 28, 2020, at the hospital in Joliette, Que., northeast of Montreal.

Echaquan, a 37-year-old Atikamekw mother of seven, used her phone to film herself at the hospital as a nurse and an orderly were heard insulting and mocking her not long before she died.

The Canadian Press