5 suspected organized crime figures arrested for 3 Montreal and Quebec homicides

A 27-year-old man is dead after a shooting in Montreal's Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough. (Cosmo Santamaria/CTV News)

Montreal and Quebec police arrested five suspects in connection with three homicides in 2023 and 2024.

Three of the suspects are scheduled to appear in court in Montreal within the day. The other two will be repatriated to the city to appear in court at a later date.

Montreal police (SPVM) said in a news release that the first homicide was in June 2023 in Charlemagne in Quebec’s Lanaudiere region. A 32-year-old man, Noel Garcia-Frias was shot and killed while getting into his Audi on Sainte-Therese Street.

Police believe the victim may have been mistaken for someone else.

In August of the same year, a 28-year-old man was shot and killed leaving a bar on Sainte-Catherine Street West in downtown Montreal.

Then in May of 2024, another man, 27, was shot and killed on Parc Avenue in Montreal’s Ahuntsic-Cartierville borough.

The SPVM arrested two suspects a month later and are searching for Dylan Denis, 27, in connection with the homicide and he is on the list of Canada’s 25 most-wanted fugitives.

The five suspects arrested this week are all men aged 26 to 35. They were apprehended in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia after searches in Montreal, Sherbrooke, Cambridge, ON, and Kamloops, BC.

“These new arrests join a dozen others made over the summer as part of this joint investigation by the SPVM and the SQ,” the SPVM said in its release. “The majority of those apprehended were linked to criminal street gangs in Montreal and Laval.”

Laval and Edmonton police assisted in the case in addition to the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and RCMP.

Anyone with information about the homicides or other related events are asked to call 911 or a local police station.