17-year-old sentenced to 2 years custody after pleading guilty to stabbing Montreal teacher
A 17-year-old high school student pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of an art teacher in Quebec youth court Monday and was sentenced to two years in custody at a youth centre and one year of surveillance.
The teen stabbed the teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in Montreal's Saint-Michel neighbourhood last December.
The teacher who was stabbed, 42-year-old Maxime Canuel, was in the courtroom when the teenager was sentenced.
Canuel said afterward that he is considering leaving the profession after 16 years of teaching, most of them spent at John F. Kennedy.
"It's pretty hard to forgive someone who tried to kill you," Canuel said in an interview with Radio-Canada.
The teen cannot be identified because he is a minor.
The stabbing, which took place on Dec. 9, 2021 at around 10 a.m., was witnessed by students who reported seeing a teenager walk into the class, stab Canuel twice and then run away.
Canuel was injured to his chest and shoulder, and his wounds were initially believed by paramedics to be life-threatening.
He was taken to hospital and had to undergo surgery, according to English Montreal School Board (EMSB) spokesperson Mike Cohen.
A spokesperson for the ambulance service said Canuel was lucky to be alive.
"It could have been a lot worse," said René Durand, an Urgences Santé spokesperson, at the time.
Tiago Múrias, the lawyer representing the teen, said Monday that several elements in the teen's case had shown there had been a lack of support services at the school for several years.
"There was no specialized intervention for the teen and there were other problems related to autism spectrum disorder that brought him to having a deformed vision of the reality of what was going on," Múrias said.
The school on Villeray Street went into lockdown after the stabbing. The student was arrested about an hour later.
