"A rage in his head": the widow of the RCMP spokesman said the coroner's investigation "attacks from the inside" have had

Sheila Lemaitre still remembers the last time she saw her husband, Pierre Lemaitre, looking happy to be in RCMP uniform.

It was October 2007. He took an early morning call about an incident at the Vancouver International Airport. A Polish citizen had died the night before in what appeared to be a clash with the police.

As a bilingual liaison with the media, Lemaitre was needed to handle the expected interest of journalists.

"It was the last time I saw him wearing his uniform with pride," Sheila Lemaitre told a coroner's inquest Monday in Vancouver, about the death of this 55-year-old man.

"I did not see that look afterwards."

Pierre Lemaitre died as a result of injuries sustained by himself in July 2013, nearly six years after the murder of Robert Dziekanski when four RCMP officers took him into a 10 hours after arriving in Canada. Lemaitre's widow, however, testified before the coroner's jury that she thought that her husband's mental deterioration was closely related to the events that followed Dziekanski's death.

Officer with principles

In both emotional and clear testimonials, Sheila Lemaitre has traced the path of her husband's life and relationship since the time when he dreamed of wearing a red jacket as a child until the heartbreaking moment when she was found his body in their home in Abbotsford.

The portrait of a devoted policeman worshiped in the communities where he began his career, a man who collected blankets and food for the homeless and who was particularly touched by the problem of violence at home. women.

For years, he recalled the brutal badual badault and murder of a woman in Bella Coola. And he was haunted for having served Christmas dinner to a woman who was later one of the missing along the notorious Highway of Tears, BC.

"Pierre is always concerned about the people he's served, he really loved them, it was not just a slogan: serve and protect, he really cared about them," he said. said Sheila Lemaitre.

"Pay it all." Act of random kindness. "It was not just words." He really believed in. It's the kind of man that my husband was until the things are starting to change. "

Lemaitre was one of the first officials to talk about the death of Robert Dziekanski. Some of the information he provided proved to be false afterwards.

Sheila Lemaitre said that one of the first derailments of her husband's career had taken place in the press detachment when a journalist had told her that she had been badually harbaded by him. senior officer of Lemaitre. Lemaitre went above the head of the man as a protocol and his sense of moral duty dictated.

He was rewarded with a humiliating rebadignment of his night service in Chilliwack.

Lemaitre's superiors finally apologized and he finally found his way back into the media division. Then came Dziekanski.

& # 39; I want it fixed & # 39;

As head of the media, Sheila Lemaitre said her husband had explained to the journalists the facts that had been transmitted to her. They turned out to be wrong. But Lemaitre was prevented from correcting the public file.

"After returning to work, Pierre was very upset and was fighting to correct the information," she said.

Instead, while a civilian video showed facts that contradicted the original version of the RCMP's events, Lemaitre saw himself described as a psychic and a liar.

"At one point, he almost shouted," I want it corrected, I want to tell them, "Sheila Lemaitre said.

Robert Dziekanski holds a small table at Vancouver International Airport before being stunned in 2007. (Paul Pritchard / Canadian Press)

He was on promotion. But these plans are gone. Sheila Lemaitre said that RCMP officials told her that the optics of the situation was bad for the force. He was thrown into the traffic division. And during this time, with every investigation, every report and every report about the tragedy of Dziekanski, Lemaitre would see his name, his image and the lies he did not have the right to correct corrected.

"It just seemed to never let the news in. Pierre did not seem to be able to distance them – it was always in the news one way or another," Sheila Lemaitre told the jurors. "Because he had never been able to defend himself, change files, no one knew the truth."

And inside, she says, the man she loved was changing. He did not want to leave the car when they went shopping, fearing to be recognized. He filled their house with stacked objects and model trains and half-built planes. He obsessively collected clippings.

And he became physically violent.

"This man who would never hurt a butterfly would throw me to the ground, strangle my neck and hit my head against the ground," said Sheila Lemaitre.

"He could not explain why he was sometimes angry, why he was so worried, there is a rage in his head that burns his brain and he can not control it."

& # 39; Attacks from the inside & # 39;

Sheila Lemaitre said that she thought her husband was progressing during the last four weeks of his life.

But looking back, she said that she had come to see that he had made a decision. He was performing heavy tasks that he knew that she could not do without him. Purchased water. Fertilizer lifted. Tasks accomplished which she had harbaded him.

On the morning of Pierre Lemaitre's death, the news announced that a verdict was expected later in the day, during the perjury lawsuit of one of the four RCMP officers accused of lying at the time. of an investigation into the death of Dziekanski.

Sheila Lemaitre turned off the TV. She told the jury that she did not know if her husband had seen the news.

Sheila Lemaitre is herself a retired RCMP officer. She told the jury to face the darkness of life was part of the job. All police officers bear the brunt of the horrors they have seen, and she says most can continue to serve with the support of their colleagues.

Pierre Lemaitre was like that once too, she said.

"Peter has always been able to get away from these objects, to wear them, to be a heavier person for them, able to come back to life, to enjoy life and to create reciprocal links", she said.

"What's wrong with us is when we are confronted with … attacks from within … It's when you do not have this internal support, when the people you work with are behind this. pressure and that pain is when it's a lot harder to get going. "