FREDERIC SERRE
The 1019 Report
The mother of a three-year-old girl who was found not criminally responsible of abandoning the child on the side of an Ontario highway last June — a case that triggered a massive three-day search throughout the Vaudreuil-Soulanges area — has been released from a psychiatric hospital and now resides at a halfway house.
The case attracted wide attention when the woman, 34, pulled her SUV into the parking lot at the fireworks outlet off Highway 20 in Coteau du Lac on June 15 and asked an employee to call police, saying she had lost her daughter, launching a dramatic search.
The case made international headlines when, three days after her disappearance, the child was found exhausted, hungry, but safe by Ontario Provincial Police Officers near Casselman, Ont., on the side of Highway 417. During the course of the massive police search, SQ officers discovered a dead dog, believed to belong to the woman, in a ditch off Highway 30 near Highway 20 in Vaudreuil-Dorion.
Last December, a judge with the Commission d’examen des troubles mentaux – an independent provincial government adjudicator – ruled that while the mother, a resident of LaSalle at the time, had made significant progress in dealing with her mental-health issues, she still had more work to do and ordered her transferred from the Philippe Pinel Institute in Montreal’s east end to the Douglas Institute in Verdun.
Three months earlier, the mother was found not criminally responsible at the Valleyfield courthouse of unlawful abandonment of a child and criminal negligence causing harm. Quebec Court Judge Bertrand St-Arnaud determined that the mother was suffering from an episode of mixed mania with psychotic symptoms when she pulled up to the fireworks outlet. This prevented her from distinguishing right from wrong, he said. Both the defence and the prosecution agreed with St-Arnaud’s verdict, who said he was basing it on a detailed psychiatrist’s report.
Last month, the woman’s case was brought before a review board of the Quebec Administrative Tribunal at the request of the Douglas Institute. After the hearing, the four-member tribunal voted unanimously to release the mother to a halfway house with a list of conditions.
According to the tribunal’s report, the mother must comply with a series of conditions, since she “poses, due to her mental state, a significant risk to public safety.” She will, therefore, have to live in a location approved by the hospital, comply with the recommendations of her treatment team, refrain from using any drugs, and undergo testing.
If her mental state deteriorates — or if she engages in behaviour that would increase the risk she poses to public safety to the point where that safety could no longer be ensured by the imposed conditions — she may have to return to detention in a psychiatric facility. The hearing transcript makes no mention of the woman’s daughter, who now reportedly lives with her father.
On the day of the child’s abandonment, the mother told a Sûreté du Québec police officer dispatched to the fireworks outlet that “she had not slept all night and that when her daughter woke up, (the mother) started making breakfast while singing and dancing. Then, suddenly, she became afraid of something, panicked, and left with the little girl and the dog in her car.”
The mother, who worked at a popular Old Montreal restaurant, said she had not been well for six months. After her arrest by SQ officers, and during her interrogation, the mother would laugh hysterically, then burst into tears. She claimed that “some entity was pulling the strings” and repeatedly mentioned the movie The Matrix.
According to the mother, her daughter’s eyes were “weird” and she was, therefore, “possessed by the devil.” She said that the little girl had been “reprogrammed” by a former co-worker with whom she had had a toxic relationship.
In the months leading up to the incident, a psychiatrist assigned to the case reported that the mother was “out of balance and her loved ones told her she was going crazy.”
According to the doctor’s summary, during the holiday season in 2024, everything changed: the mother separated from the girl’s father and was on the verge of burnout. The woman posted nearly 250 videos on TikTok, where she talked about “resetting her nervous system” and that “energy does not die and that supports the theory that we are in some kind of simulation.”
She finally left her job, which she had held for more than a decade, in early June. None of her coworkers had seen her since. “The last month, we really felt that she was disconnected,” said one employee.
Local Journalism Initiative