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Gatineau police 'not satisfied' with 30-minute response to homicide scene

Gatineau to hire 911 dispatchers in wake of slow response to 2017 homicide

Gatineau police have launched an internal investigation to find out why it took half an hour for officers to arrive at the scene of the city's first homicide of 2017.

Around noon Wedneday, police received a call about an agitated man acting suspiciously on Boulevard de la Cité-des-jeunes in the city's Hull sector.

Ousmane Alkaly, the resident who called 911, told CBC that a man who appeared to be in a trance had been ramming his window with a block of wood before running off in the direction of a neighbour's home.

However in a news release, police spokesman Jean-Paul Le May said there were no units available to respond to Alkaly's call right away.

When officers finally arrived around 12:30, they found a suspect behind 171 Boul. de la Cité-des-jeunes and soon after, discovered the body of 83-year-old Thérèse Gauvreau inside the home.

"We want to maintain high standards of quality in our police interventions. And we are not satisfied with this 30-minute delay," Le May told CBC News Friday. "So we want to know exactly what happened."

Le May said that a portion of that 30-minute period between the initial 911 call and their discovery of Gauvreau's body was spent speaking with Alkaly on the phone to get a description of the suspect. But he acknowledged it took police too long to arrive.

"Right from the start we knew that the delay was too long. It's not something that was brought up from the public. We knew, right from the start, that there was something problematic."

Gatineau police have a protocol for how quickly officers are expected to arrive at the scene of a homicide, Le May added, but for security reasons those precise guidelines are not made public.

Suspect, 21, in custody

Jean-François Dupuis, 21, has been charged with second-degree murder. He appeared in court briefly Thursday.

Dupuis will remain in custody while he undergoes a five-day psychiatric assessment to determine if he's fit to stand trial.

Gauvreau was part of a family well known in the Outaouais for running Gauvreau Top Soil, and had worked at the Pierre-Janet psychiatric hospital in Gatineau for decades, according to her daughter.

Gatineau police plan to release portions of the investigation's findings when it's completed.