Based on coverage from Global News, The Epoch Times, CP24, The News International, and Montreal Gazette.
Montreal police have announced criminal charges against 11 young people after investigating the events that led up to the fatal police shooting of 15-year-old Nooran Rezayi in Longueuil.
Rezayi was shot and killed by a Longueuil police officer on Sept. 21 after police responded to a 911 call or report about armed youths. The new charges do not arise from the shooting itself, but from what Montreal police say they examined: the circumstances that prompted the Longueuil police intervention.
Charges follow Rezayi shooting
All 11 accused were between 13 and 17 years old at the time of the alleged events.
The charges include conspiracy offences, disguise or identity-concealment offences, weapons offences and unlawful assembly. Montreal police Insp. David Shane described the investigation as focused on what happened before officers arrived.
“There’s a reason why the police officers in Longueuil were called to the scene, and that’s the part the SPVM investigated,” Shane said, according to source reporting. “It all has to do with what prompted the intervention.”
Because the case involves minors, police have offered limited public detail about the accused and their alleged roles. Shane told journalists he understood the limits were frustrating.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t go as far as you would have wanted,” he said, “but I hope you understand the parametres of dealing with such a case.”
Separate probe into police actions
The Montreal police investigation was not an investigation into the shooting. That part of the case belongs to Quebec’s police watchdog, the Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes, known as the BEI, which was responsible for examining the actions of the officers involved.
That division matters. The criminal charges announced by Montreal police speak to alleged conduct before the fatal encounter. They do not, on their own, explain why Rezayi was shot or whether the police response was justified.
One detail has remained central to the public understanding of the case: the only firearm found or seized at the scene belonged to the officer who shot Rezayi.
That fact sits uneasily beside the original police response to a report about armed youths, and it helps explain why the case has drawn sustained scrutiny from Rezayi’s family and others connected to the incident.
Families seek answers in court
Rezayi’s family has filed a lawsuit over the shooting. Families of other teenagers connected to the incident have also launched separate legal action.
Fernando Belton, a lawyer representing Rezayi’s family, said the Montreal police announcement did not resolve the central question for those grieving Nooran.
“They just want answers,” Belton told reporters, according to source reporting.
The lawsuits mean the matter is now unfolding on more than one track: criminal proceedings against 11 young people, a watchdog review of the officers’ conduct, and civil claims brought by families seeking accountability through the courts.
A case with two investigations
The public record now contains two distinct threads.
The first concerns what Montreal police say preceded the Longueuil police response: alleged conspiracy, concealment, weapons-related offences and unlawful assembly involving young people who were all minors at the time.
The second concerns the actions of the officers who responded to the call and the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old boy. That question belongs to the BEI’s examination of police conduct.
For Rezayi’s family, and for the families of other teenagers tied to the incident, the announcement of charges is not the end of the story. It is another step in a case still defined by a stark fact: a teenager is dead, the only firearm found or seized at the scene was the officer’s, and multiple legal processes are now moving through the system.
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