Street beats
>> The killing of Gaétan Ouelette raises the issue of homeless violence

by CRAIG SEGAL

Roger Ranwez is all bones under his Atlanta Falcons sweatshirt and dirty red track pants. Pale, scarred and pockmarked, the 35 year old is skinnier than he was last year, when security cameras filmed him at the scene of a homeless man’s murder in a bank machine lobby downtown. Standing in the witness box in a fifth-floor courtroom last Monday, Ranwez leans heavily on his left arm, his knuckles pressed against the top of the podium. In the security videos Ranwez has a full, bearded face. His close-cropped hair is tidier than the thinning, wispy strands he regularly pulls off his face in court.

Prosecutors are charging Ranwez, 35, and Donald Dion, 53, with the murder of Gaétan Ouelette, 57, in the Bank of Montreal lobby on Bleury and Ste-Catherine. Police had also charged a third man, Christian Giguère, 35, who hanged himself in prison before the trial started. A security guard found Ouelette’s body at 1 a.m., April 2, in a pool of blood, with fractured skull and facial bones. Allegedly, while beating him for 24 minutes, one or more of the three men crushed his larynx, suffocating him to death.

Ranwez testified he blew several hundred dollars partying over the Easter weekend before the murder. By April 1 he was broke, so he panhandled for money to buy king cans. He met up with Ouelette, Giguère, and Dion, and they drank together throughout the day. By the evening, they were sharing a bottle of dep wine in the bank machine lobby. Ranwez denies hurting the victim, whom he calls “a great friend.” He lays the blame squarely on Dion and Giguère, both of whom he says he tried to stop.

Because of the bad quality of the bank video, it is not clear exactly what happened. In court last Monday, the prosecutor asked Ranwez to describe several video frames where he is positioned near the victim waving his hands. Ranwez responded that he was asking Ouelette if he was all right. The prosecutor asked about another scene where Ranwez’s foot appears to be in the air near the victim. Ranwez said he was merely stretching his leg, which he says has severe problems requiring medication.

Dion refused to testify, but prosecution showed the court a videotaped police interview with him the day after the murder. Like Ranwez, Dion said he and Ouelette were close friends. At first Dion denied beating him, but then said he jumped on a prostrate Ouelette with both feet, though he didn’t know why. “He was badly beaten,” Dion said. “He might have already been dead.” Dion also admitted he is an alcoholic who drinks about four king cans a day.
Police found Dion sleeping in another lobby in the same bank several hours after the murder, his head propped on Ouelette’s backpack. Throughout the trial, Dion sat slumped in the prisoners’ box with his head resting heavily in his hand. On Monday he sported a grey double-breasted suit and tie.

Substances and suicide

In an interview with the Mirror, Ranwez’s sister said an alcoholic family member abused her and her brother as kids. “[The family member] would hit us with a riding crop,” Jacqueline Ranwez, 36, told the Mirror. “She told me I was a dog, that I wouldn’t amount to anything. Me and my brother were the black sheep of the family.”

Ranwez, who is on welfare, says her brother “was a good guy except for his problems with drugs. He might yell or break something or threaten you, but he was never violent. When he’s upset he takes it out on himself.” She says her brother attempted suicide four times in prison, slitting his wrists and swallowing pills and razor blades. Nevertheless, she thinks her brother does not need psychological or alcohol counselling.

Ranwez’s sister is not the only one sticking up for the accused. A street worker says Dion asked for and took some help for his alcoholism. “Donald got to be violent when he drank,” says Duane Mansfield of the Dialogue outreach program. “I never saw him in fights but he got angry real quick.” Mansfield also describes the victim as a “really friendly, super nice guy” who “joked around quite a bit.”

The owner of a restaurant near the scene of the murder describes another accused—Christian Giguère—as “a nice guy” who regularly bought poutines. Giguère was “okay” when he was sober, says George Tzakas, owner of the Turf deli on Ste-Catherine and Bleury. “When he was drunk he was different, like everybody else.” But, Tzakas says, Giguère fought with the half dozen homeless men who slept in the alley behind the deli. “They used to fight all the time. They’d fight over a drink. They would sit around a bottle and pass it around.”

Vulnerable, not violent

People who have experience with Montreal’s 15,000 homeless say the murder was a freak incident. “Most homeless people are more vulnerable than they are violent,” says Isabelle Leduc, director of the St. James Drop-In Centre on Ste-Catherine and City Councillors. “It puts them in a situation of vulnerability rather than a situation of being threatening.”
Montreal police say they keep no statistics on violence among the city’s homeless, since they don’t break violence down into categories. But media relations agent Luc Belhumeur told the Mirror this is the only case he knows of from last year where homeless are being charged with murder. “There’s nothing I can confirm about homeless violence,” says Belhumeur. “Every citizen has the right to impeccable service.”

The director of the Old Brewery Mission says the issue of homeless-on-homeless violence isn’t especially severe. “More people are killed outside of fancy nightclubs on St-Laurent than are kicked to death by homeless people,” says Reverend Robert Warren. “Our folks are peaceful. By the time they end up living under a bridge or in a bank machine foyer they’re physically debilitated. Sixty to 80 of our guys aren’t well enough to make decisions on their own.”

Pierre Anthian, director of the Accueil Bonneau Homeless Men’s Choir, says, “Homeless people are less violent than you and me.” Anthian thinks society’s treatment of the homeless is partly to blame for the murder. “The more people are beaten, the more they hurt, the more violent they become,” Anthian says. “When people are treated like animals, they behave like animals. I’m not trying to justify what happened. I’m just trying to say that when people are beaten, they need help.

“If we treat them like men, and help them take their proper place in society, these kinds of things would never happen. I’m sure it would never happen.” :