On August 9, 2008 an eighteen year-old Honduran immigrant named Fredy Villanueva was shot dead by Montreal police constable Jean-Loup Lapointe in a Montreal North park. One year after the incident, the circumstances of Fredy’s death remain shrouded in mystery. Did he provoke the bullets fired in self-defense by Lapointe when he surrounded and threatened the policeman with his 5 friends? Or was Fredy the innocent victim of police aggression in a community with a history of racial tension between police officers and young immigrants?
These are the compelling questions that animate Selwyn House School’s Grade 11 drama students as they attempt to create a documentary play about the 60 seconds before Fredy Villanueva was shot. 60 seconds – that is the approximate time that elapsed from the moment Constable Lapointe and his partner Constable Stéphanie Pilotte arrived in Henri-Bourassa park, until when the first of three bullets hit Fredy.
In order to piece together the facts of the shooting, the students have followed a rigourous research process – delving into media articles, interviewing people involved with the incident, and attending the Coroner Inquest hearings currently taking place in Montreal. Their detective work will ultimately be transposed into theatrical dialogue and performed as a thrilling documentary drama about the relationship between youth and authority, law and justice, violence and tolerance.
0 Responses to “About”