Injured, he doesn’t want to be his friend

Photo Claudia Berthiaume
Tommy Lanctôt turns to embrace his father Eric, so that we don’t see his facial injuries.

Claudia Berthiaume

Sunday, 4 march, 2018 01:00

UPDATE
Sunday, 4 march, 2018 01:00

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Even if he almost died when his skull was smashed to pieces in a road accident which claimed the lives of two of his friends, a teen of 16 years does not want the 15-year-old who was driving without a licence.

“We are all guilty [to have been] in the car,” says Tommy Lanctôt.

The teenager of 16 years was not an ounce of malice toward the driver of a 15-year-old, who took the wheel without a licence, on the 9th of October last, in the Lanaudière region.

Photo courtesy

Tommy Lanctôt, before the accident.

“I’m just excited that it was over [the police investigation] to get back to it as before,” he says.

Five months after the tragedy which claimed the lives of two young people of 14 and 17 years, Eric Lanctôt and his son Tommy have agreed to entrust the Newspaper.

The latter has memories very blurred from the accident, which occurred on the eve of thanksgiving, at Lavaltrie.

He was playing video games with his best friend when a teen 14 years of age would have suggested going for a ride with the car of his mother.

“I said that I would not go, but he wrote back to me [a text message]: “It is right in front of you, do you come or not ?” “recounts Tommy Lanctôt.

He said that he has come to accept, believing that his best friend of 17 years — the only one who had a regular license, was going to lead. In fact, several of the five young people present in the car would have taken the wheel that night, after him.

Photo Agence QMI, Mathieu Wagner

The impact occurred on the 9th October last, in Lanaudière was so violent that four of the five young people had to be désincarcérés by the fire department of Joliette.

Nine days in a coma

Tommy Lanctôt remembers then that the Volkswagen was traveling on the boulevard Base-de-Roc, and then it is totally black. “I woke up in the hospital of the Sacred Heart nine days later “, ” he says.

“The nine worst days of my life,” says his father Eric, who feared of losing his only son.

Tommy Lanctôt has no memory that his friend of 15 years has lost control of the car in a curve and then hit a tree.

The ado 16-year-old had a head injury very severe, multiple fractures, including several to the face, a contusion to a lung, and a laceration of the liver. Two of his cervical vertebrae were crushed, and the left side of his body was paralyzed for three weeks.

Tommy Lanctôt was able to return home on the 18th of January last, but it still needs to go regularly to a rehabilitation center in Joliette there for many years. He has not been able to return to school.

Not an example

“What he must say to the young people, it is not to take example from this situation-to have fun. We always think that it happens to other people, but when it happens to us, it is too late to go back, ” said Eric Lanctot.

If he could go back, Tommy would not have accepted the invitation of his friend. “I imagine I am always telling [my best friend] : “Let it be so, we continue to [play video games].” If I’d done this, nothing would have happened “, he said with tears in her eyes.

►No charges have been filed against the driver for the time being. “A further investigation has been requested to the Sûreté du Québec,” said Jean-Pascal Boucher, a spokesperson for the Director of criminal and penal prosecutions.