Witnesses Describe How the Quebec Daycare Bus Crash Unfolded, Moment by Moment

People stand next to a memorial at the site of a daycare centre in Laval, Que, Feb. 9, 2023, where a bus crashed into the building killing two children. The Canadian Press/Graham Hughes

It was just before 8:30 a.m. Wednesday when André Beaudoin pulled into the parking lot to bring his two-year-old son to daycare. The Garderie Éducative Ste-Rose in Laval, Que., was busy, with parents stopping to drop off their children for the day.

The sound of an engine revving was Beaudoin’s first signal that something wasn’t right. He looked up and saw a city bus barrelling down the driveway before it smashed into the front of the daycare, into the room where the oldest children—the four- and five-year-olds—gather.

What happened in the minutes and hours that followed would resonate across the country, culminating in a tragedy that left two four-year-old children dead, six children in hospital and a city bus driver with an unremarkable history facing charges of first-degree murder.

While police are still piecing together what happened, witness accounts gathered over the two days following the accident provide a harrowing account of those first moments.

Hamdi Benchaabane, who lives next door to the daycare, quickly knew something was wrong. He’s used to watching buses slowly navigate the roundabout at the end of his dead-end street to pull up at the bus stop in front of his house. This one instead made a sharp turn into the daycare’s driveway and headed straight for the building at a speed he estimates was 30 or 40 kilometres an hour.

In the seconds following the impact, Beaudoin, Benchaabane and another parent from the parking lot, Mike Haddad, sprinted into the shattered building.

Beaudoin began pushing through concrete and debris from the walls and partly collapsed ceiling and pulling injured children from under the bus in a scene he would later describe as “the worst thing in the world.”

Haddad and Benchaabane, meanwhile, began wrestling with the driver, who had removed his pants and was yelling incoherently. He was, as Benchaabane said, “in another world.”

Soon after, more parents and neighbours arrived—some helping to restrain the driver and others gathering the rest of the children. As pieces of the ceiling fell, Benchaabane remembers helping one child to safety. But there was at least one trapped child they couldn’t reach, he said.

The three men, who met that day for the first time, say they'll remain haunted by what they saw. Haddad said he hears the voices of children in his head: the ones he couldn’t help, who were hurt or died.