A septuagenarian who wanted to accelerate the melting of a snowbank blown by the city on his land in Trois-Rivières lost his life last week, buried under it while trying to shovel it.
“I called it Johnny’s grave. We saw him every day removing the black snow. He was afraid that it would not melt, ”drops Pierrette Abel, mother of John Collins, who perished in the accident.
The lady, still very lucid at the venerable age of 94, says she worried every time he pulled out the shovel.
On April 3, the 71-year-old man, who lived in his duplex with his mother, would have gone out in the afternoon to shovel layers of the snowdrift located at the corner of his lot on rue Chapleau, in Cap-de-France. -Madeleine.
“It was the city that was stringing it there. It was almost the height of the house, ”explains Mr.me Abel, who wondered where his son was. He hadn’t brought him coffee in the evening or in the morning.
She then called the 755 Billiard Room, where the septuagenarian was a concierge, to find out if anyone had met him. But no one had seen him.
end of coat
It was finally one of his brothers, who had come to inquire about the situation, who saw a piece of his coat.
“Johnny was a very tidy guy. He would never have left his things lying around, ”says the nonagenarian.
Called to the scene around 1:15 p.m., the police ended up discovering the inert body of the man under the pile of snow.
“Investigators quickly determined that it was not a criminal case,” said Sergeant Luc Mongrain, of the Trois-Rivières police.
“A motton of ice would have come off. It must have hit his head. That’s what would have made the snow tumble on him, says Mme Abel, devastated by this loss. I refused to see him. I was not able to go there. It looked like I had both legs cut off. »
“I have all my head. She is there and she suffers. John was my right arm. He was always ready to help, ”she says, about the one who accompanied her to her medical appointments, she who can no longer move alone.
“Not everyone would do that for their mother,” she adds.
Dual drama
The lady suffers, especially since it is the third of her thirteen children that she loses, and the second in a month.
Another son, Russel Collins, 65, died of cancer on March 7.
“He suffered martyrdom. It was a deliverance. It’s hard. It’s very hard. You have to go through it to understand. You may have a lot [d’enfants]they all have their place,” she says.
Tuesday evening, the City of Trois-Rivières was unable to comment on the case. A coroner is investigating the circumstances of this death.
Reference-www.journaldemontreal.com