Regrettably, I was the victim of attempted cold-blooded premeditated murder today. I do not wish to make an accusation at the moment as fingers can always be pointed in other directions. Rather, I would like to offer an educated hypothesis. On December 28th, 2023 at 3:25 PM, I was within a fraction of a second of being assassinated by a reckless roughly 30-year-old man driving an out-of-service Société de Transport de Montreal (STM) electric bus. The driver arrived on Wellington Street at full speed (in excess of 50 kilometres per hour) in a 30 kilometre per hour zone making almost no sound as soon as I left the sidewalk. The bus was at least 75 metres from the intersection of Wellington and King streets when I entered the intersection. He had not yet crossed Rue des Soeurs-Grises. I was walking at a pace of one meter per second and the width of the street is 9,4 meters. When he arrived at the intersection of King Street, he honked his horn without trying to slow down. The driver caught me entirely off guard as the bus devoured six metres of precious distance during the third of a second that was required for me to lunge for the sidewalk. I had less than a second to react and to reach the curb safely. A quarter of a second less would have cost me my life. It would have been a direct impact to the body, launching me airborne and resulting in immediate fatality. Surely, this is the closest I have ever been to dying. A sudden boost of epinephrine saved me.

The bus was moving so quickly that it appeared to come out of nowhere. The visible length of the street was entirely clear when I began crossing. Moreover, the electric bus produced no discernable sound. The sadist honked his horn with just over half a second on the clock in order to ensure that I would turn my head in his direction and suffer a gruesome and frightening death.

The driver most probably departed with some initial momentum from the empty delivery lane on the northbound segment of McGill Street, favoring acceleration distance over the shorter path from Rue des Soeurs-Grises using a technique mastered by Mohammed Ata on the day of the attack on the World Trade Center. He probably also benefitted from the bend in Wellington Street that blindspots pedestrians for the initial 25 metres of the bull charge, making the bus invisible to the viewer for about two seconds.

In an organization like the STM, a psychopath such as this would not survive very long. I signaled the tremendous violation of conduct to the STM, but I am yet to receive a reply. He poses a great risk to citizens and to the organization. Bus drivers are the best trained and most cautious drivers on the road because they are responsible for the lives of others. They are skilled in taking evasive action to avoid pedestrians at all cost. Had his brakes failed, he would have known to swerve into the adjacent empty incoming lane to save a life. Instead, he accelerated his vehicle over more than 75 metres in order to engineer a direct impact with a very visible red-adorned pedestrian in broad daylight. He had nowhere particular to rush to. There was no reason for him to hurry as there was a traffic signal at the following intersection. He only began decelerating after crossing King Street. Moreover, given the speed at which the out-if-service city bus was travelling, condemnation for voluntary manslaughter would have been automatic. Second-degree murder would not have been difficult to establish. An individual who wishes to maintain his employment and is fastidious about avoiding conviction and incarceration would never take such a risk.

At the time, there was an elderly (60-year-old) man sitting in a stationary white car watching (and possibly timing my progress) on the north side of Wellington Street. He did not seem to be the least surprised or concerned that I had almost been run down.

A similar incident involving a white SUV occurred at the same location, last month. However, the vehicle was too far away and travelling too slowly when I noticed that the driver was accelerating. I immediately cleared the intersection. In this case, from the time I entered the intersection, there was perhaps double the necessary distance required for the driver to very comfortably bring the bus to a full stop.

Quite honestly, it is extremely difficult for me to believe that the individual who committed this hateful crime was an STM regular. Drivers along that route proceed cautiously as there is only one westbound lane. I tend to believe that the individual was a paid assassin. The observer sitting in the white car north of Wellington Street was most likely a plainclothes police officer. There are only a handful of organizations in the city that could order an empty city bus on short notice. And the SPVM happens to be one of the first in the cue. It is also worth noting that there are a number of security cameras in the area that the SPVM has access to. Moreover, only an individual or entity with significant protection from legal prosecution would attempt murder in a public setting using a two-and-a-half-ton city bus. As the ineffectual scarecrow lawyer, Melanie Hillinger, who happens to be the police commissioner has shown, the SPVM happens to be one such organization. They possessed both the capacity and the albeit foolhardy motive to act.

Over the past year, I have exposed various criminal activities by Montreal police officers including fraud, corruption, defamation, breach of trust and vandalism. I also understand from testimonials that my experiences are not unique. Now, add to these methods used by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in Israel and by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Nice and Berlin, it appears that Montreal does not have a police force, but rather a state-funded terrorist organization. The city does, indeed, have competent and courteous police officers who enforce the law as written. And I apologize to those hardworking individuals for the fact that I have to write this piece. Quite simply, there have been attempts on my life and I would like it to be known publicly that if a similar attack recurs, the individuals who bear malice towards me will be prime suspects. Unfortunately, the 8-10% of the force that engages in blatant criminal activity more than offsets the conscientious efforts. An organization that employs methods used by other terrorist organizations must also be branded as such. With all of our technological advances over the past century, it appears that the core social fabric of our community still resides in the bootlegging and contraband era of 1930s Chicago.