Tuesday evening (06/02/2024) at around 5pm, an unknown assailant fired multiple gunshots into a parked black sedan that was sitting in a parking lot. The incident took place near Boulevard Brunswick and Des Sources intersection in Dollards-des-Ormeaux, a borough on the west island of Montreal. Found dead, slumped in the driver’s seat, was a man by the name of Stevens Cantave, aged 42 years old. Emergency services declared him dead by the time of their arrival.
He was shot in a parking lot that housed a gym, multiple restaurants and a movie theatre. Many patrons of the restaurant rushed outside when they heard the shots to see what was happening. Owner of the Del Frisco restaurant mentioned “It’s really calm here usually. We don’t expect these things to happen”.
This marked the 5th murder of 2024 on the island of Montreal.
Who was Stevens Cantave and why was he shot? The incident is too recent to cover the latter, but we can dig into Cantave’s past and start to think the shooting was intentional. In 2003, Cantave was accused of kidnapping and drug trafficking along with 2 other men. One of which was Jackenson Raymond. Cantave was only guilty of drug trafficking. But Raymond was found in a Rosemont apartment with his throat slit 4 years later in January of 2007.
To no surprise, Cantave was close to the Plan Bellechasse, a street gang that aligns itself with Bellechasse Street on the east end of Montreal, in the Rosemont borough. Most notably, he was friends with Marckens Vilme, a powerful and influential member of the Bellechasse gang.
Marckens Vilme is no saint either, he had gotten convicted on a cocaine and firearms charge in the summer of 2011 and sentenced to 21 months in prison. When he had gotten out of prison in 2012, he had got into a police chase for driving erratically while still being on parole, he ended up crashing the vehicle and was sentenced to 40 months in prison.
Vilme had bigger skeletons in his closet. The skeleton being when he shot a Hells Angels in Mississauga in March of 2019. The shooting took place outside the parking lot of a gym. The member in question was Michael “Diaz’ Deabaitua-Schulde, of the Niagara Chapter. He wasn’t alone though, he was with three other accomplices.
Brandon Reyes, who was only 24 at the time was charged with accessory after the fact to murder. He came close to being misidentified for a Jonathan Martinez Reyes; an alias he had made up at the time of his arrest. He had been arrested in June of 2018 while incarcerated for a number of armed robberies committed in 2017. The 2018 charge was for human trafficking.
Joseph Pallotta, 38, and a resident of Montreal is also wanted in connection to the Deabaitua-Schulde murder. His charge; first degree murder. Pallotta decided to flee from the charges, going on the lam. Police have stated he is armed and dangerous.
The last suspect in the Deabaitua-Schulde murder is 26 year old Marc Issa El-Khoury, who was arrested trying to cross the border to the United States, he was also charged with first-degree murder but was later acquitted.
So? Can the cause of your death be summed up by what kind of entourage you have? When it’s a shooting and you’re close to an influential leader of a street gang, some might say so. We can’t say that Stevens Cantave’s death was gang related, but we can presume it.
