Screams haunt town
But Saint-Constant search yields only more mystery ALLISON HANES The Gazette Thursday 8 June 2000

The first desperate cries were heard on the outskirts of Saint-Constant around 9 p.m. Tuesday. They drew police to a wooded area on the edge of town and prompted them to scour the bush all night for their source. But by dawn, an exhaustive search had yielded only mystery.

The first shrieks - what sounded like the distress signals of a terrified woman - alarmed a resident of the small South Shore town enough to call 911 and report an emergency.

Just after 10 p.m., police began to search a wooded area and field adjacent to a new housing development near St. Regis St. and Petit St. Regis St. S.

Several drawn-out screams, each lasting about 10 seconds, resounded in the ears of rescuers, deepening their urgency to find the source.

"There were five or six cries," said Michel Labreche, territory supervisor for the Rousillon intermunicipal police. "There were no words spoken, but it was like the voice of a woman."

Upon hearing the cries, police launched a full-scale search-and-rescue operation.

Residents in a neighbourhood of new, stylish single-family homes overlooking the wooded area could hear the whir overhead of an RCMP helicopter that was shining down its search beam.

Ambulances and fire trucks lined the still-unpaved streets of the neighbourhood. A sniffing-dog team was let loose to comb the overgrown field. Searchers on all-terrain vehicles traversed the broad expanse of open territory on the west side of Saint-Constant.

But by yesterday morning, the cries had fallen silent. And searchers had turned up nothing. Police called off the search and said they have no plans to resume it.

"We found nothing," Labreche said. "There were also no reports of anyone who had disappeared or was missing."

In spite of the large-scale operation, police are writing off the alarming cries as nothing more than the calls of wild animals.

"We have now concluded that it was coyotes," Labreche said. "We have heard of this happening before."

But residents of the neighbourhood are not satisfied. They have several theories of their own.

Jacinthe Rivard and her cousin Claudette Champagne, who moved in only a week ago, wonder if their own little mystery might be connected to the cries.

"Someone knocked on the back door (Tuesday night) and then left," Rivard said. "It was just one knock. But when we went to check, there was no one."

A half-hour later, police descended on the field behind their house.

Another neighbour, who gave her name only as Marie-Therese, said: "Sometimes kids play in those woods, and teenagers go there."

She worries that police called off the search too early and that someone might still be out there frightened, wounded - even dead.

"You never know what could have happened. It could have been a rape."

Most neighbours expressed skepticism about the coyote theory.

"I think (the police) have to say that to save face," said Julie Deslippe, who has lived across from the search site for a year. "I've never seen coyotes anywhere near here."

Fernand Bonneaux, who for 40 years has lived in a house backing onto the woods, agreed. "I've never seen or heard coyotes around here," he said. But "honestly I hope it was a coyote and not a woman who is hurt."