Montreal-area family says police slow to investigate alleged racial attack

Three women aged 18 and under say a man verbally assaulted them with racial slurs and then attacked their car with an axe while they were sitting in a driveway.

A Montreal-area mother is expressing rage and horror about an alleged racially motivated attack against her 18-year-old daughter and three other young women.

Lyndia Barthold says the four women were sitting in a parked car in Terrebonne, north of Montreal, when a man started swinging an axe at a closed window and screaming racial slurs.

She claims Terrebonne police initially did not take the case seriously because the victims are black.

“This is a situation that caused me tears every second that I think about it,” Barthold said at a press conference.

The mother and Terrebonne home owner says she’s experienced racism living in Quebec plenty of times, but never anything nearly as horrific as what her daughter Destiny and her three friends went through on the night of Nov. 21.

“I’ve been feeling really depressed, really sad. I haven’t been feeling like myself,” Destiny said.

Barthold and civil rights group The Red Coalition say Destiny was sitting in the passenger seat of her friend’s car in the driveway of Barthold’s home on de la Matamec Street in Terrebonne.

“Straight out of the pages of a Hollywood horror script, a man in a hoodie and a ski mask brandishing an axe and knife accosted these girls,” said founder and executive director of the Red Coalition Joel Debellefeuille.