A second feminicide has hit Quebec in nearly 24 hours following two septuagenarians were found dead in a Laval residence on Saturday evening.
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Mary Lombardo, a resident of Boulevard de Blois in the Duvernay district, had no idea she would be the last person to see Joao Marques, 75, alive when he returned home on Friday.
“Saturday morning, my husband said to me: ‘It’s really funny, because he’s one of the first neighbors, when there’s a big storm, who comes out right away to clear his snow and there’s full on his car,” she recalls.
And around 7:30 p.m., several Laval police officers were dispatched to the scene. They found the bodies of Mr Marques and his wife Maria Cristovao, 71. The thesis of a murder followed by a suicide is favored by the investigators.
Photo QMI Agency, Thierry Laforce
State of shock
According to our information, it would be a son of the septuagenarians, worried regarding not having heard from his parents, who would have discovered his mother in his room and his father in the garage.
As the police examined the scene, Mr.me Lombardo invited the couple’s two children as well as a girlfriend to warm up.
They were in shock, she says. My heart breaks for these children. »
Photo QMI Agency, Thierry Laforce
Incomprehension
M’s husbandme Lombardo, Mario Poccia, who rubbed shoulders with Joao Marques when the latter was a gardener for the City of Montreal, was also shaken, having only good memories of the alleged murderer.
“I was his representative at the time, so he came to see me often for business and following that he retired,” says Poccia.
As for Maria Cristovao, “we only saw her when they went out together to go shopping, otherwise we hardly ever saw her,” he continues.
The couple’s relatives declined to speak with The newspaper.
Local residents testified to their total incomprehension of the tragedy. None of them remembers having attended an altercation or police intervention in this family established for at least 35 years in the neighborhood.
“I haven’t slept all night because for me, where I come from, the neighborhood is important […] especially since I knew [M. Marques] says Fatah, a father who lives right next to the scene of the crime.
– With Camille Payant and Maxime Deland, QMI Agency
♦ On Friday evening, Patrizia Rao, 59, and Frédérick-Lynn Blair, 63, were found dead in a residence in Dunham. The Sûreté du Québec confirmed the thesis of murder followed by suicide.
Number of feminicides in recent years
- 2021 : 26
- 2020 : 23
- 2019 : 13
- 2018 : 16
Sources: Bureau of Investigation and Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability
*Note that the definition of a feminicide may vary depending on the source
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