Police officer involved in fatal altercation with Île-Bizard man delivers contradictory testimony

Two of the four Montreal police officers involved in restraining 28-year-old Koray Celik just moments before he died testified during a public inquiry on Tuesday, with one of them saying she feared for her life during the altercation and the other delivering testimony that contradicted a previous version of events he had given.

Karine Bujold and her partner were the first to arrive at Celik's house around 2 a.m. on the night of March 6, 2017, after his parents called 911 saying their son was intoxicated, aggressive and wanted to get behind the wheel. 

Bujold was the first officer to testify on Tuesday.

"I really thought I was going to die in that house, in that moment," an emotional Bujold said at the second day of the coroner's public inquiry into the young man's death. 

The Celiks have maintained that officers used excessive force on their son, saying they watched as he was kicked, choked and beaten with batons until he stopped breathing.

On Monday, they refused to participate in the inquiry saying they had lost faith in a process that seemed to protect police. 

Bujold testified at length on Tuesday and sobbed openly while describing her version of events. At one point, the inquiry recessed for 10 minutes to allow her to regain her composure. 

Bujold said she and her partner Alexandre Bélair — who testified Monday — arrived at the scene and immediately went to speak with Celik's parents. She said Bélair spoke with the man's father, Cesur, who was outside near the garage, while she went up to his mother, June, who was standing on the front stoop. 

On Monday, Bélair testified that Cesur told him his son was high and needed to calm down. He pleaded for officers not to enter the home. 

Bujold told the inquiry Tuesday that this information was not relayed to her, so she followed Celik's mother inside and asked where her son was. Bujold said June did not answer her question, but instead turned around and made her way down a dimly lit hallway.

Bujold followed her — a move deputy chief coroner Luc Malouin questioned. Malouin, who's presiding over the inquiry, said not asking for more information about Celik first was very dangerous and could have gotten her killed. 

Bujold said she turned on her flashlight and saw Celik standing in a doorway. She said immediately, he aggressively told her to turn off her flashlight, which she was shining at his chest to check if he was armed. She said she told him no. Bujold said Celik repeated his demand, to which she again replied no. 

That's when Bujold said Celik raised his fists in the air, adopted a boxer's stance and charged at her. 

She said she quickly moved backward as Celik continued to advance toward her. She said he was much larger than she was and she feared he would disarm her of any tools she took out to subdue him. That's the moment she said she believed she would die. 

No de-escalation training at time of incident

Bujold said she was eventually able to take out her baton and hit Celik in the left thigh with it, but it was not effective. At this moment, with Celik's fists still raised in the air, Bujold said her colleagues, including Jérôme Babin, entered the house and tackled him to the ground. 

Babin made the first move, according to the testimony he gave on Tuesday.

He said he grabbed Celik by the shoulders, shoved him into a wall and brought him to the ground. He said he did this because the man showed signs that he would charge at Bujold once more and injure her.

He said he attempted to steady Celik's head while his colleagues jumped in to try and restrain his arms and legs. Both officers described Celik resisting with great force, and Babin said at one point, the young man bit him. However, he acknowledged that the bite didn't make it through his winter gloves.

Babin corroborated Bujold's testimony, saying two pairs of handcuffs were required to subdue Celik. Both officers said they did not hit the man while he was on the ground and do not recall seeing their partners hit him. 

Both Bujold and Babin said it came as a shock when they turned Celik on his side and saw that his face was blue and he had no pulse. They said officers took off the cuffs and Babin started performing CPR, but the man was unresponsive and was taken away in an ambulance. 

Alexandre Popovic — the lawyer representing an anti-police-brutality organization, the Coalition contre la répression et les abus policiers — asked whether Bujold thought she and her colleagues might have gone too far when she noticed Celik had no pulse. She said no. 

Asked whether she had received any de-escalation training at the time of the event, Bujold said she hadn't.

'You'll lose all credibility by going down that road'

During questioning, several inconsistencies were pointed out between Babin's testimony and his initial police reports — specifically about whether Celik dealt blows to officers or if they suffered serious injuries at Celik's hands.

During Babin's testimony, he said they had not, while in the initial report, he wrote they had.

While attempting to reconcile those differences, Coroner Malouin interjected, saying, "you'll lose all credibility by going down that road." Malouin said the report contradicted Babin's testimony on Tuesday.

Celik's parents have also described the events very differently than police. In 2021, a Quebec civil court judge slammed Quebec's police watchdog — the BEI — for favouring officers' versions of events following in the case. The Celik family was awarded $30,000 in damages.

In 2020, the family filed a $558,000 lawsuit against the City of Montreal and Urgences-Santé.

The inquiry is scheduled to continue through to early December.