Villanueva, a Honduran immigrant, was shot and killed by a Montreal Police officer in the parking lot of Montreal-Nord's Henri-Bourassa Arena, near Rolland Boulevard and Pascal Street, just after 7:00 p.m.[1] Two other men were injured in the shooting.
A Montreal resident, Villanueva arrived in Quebec with his older brother, Dany, and his three sisters (Patricia, Wendy, and Lilian) on December 5, 1998.
Dany also pleaded guilty to a charge of being found in a car in the presence of a firearm while in the company of four individuals, wearing red scarves.
Fredy, Dany, and three other men were playing dice in a parking lot when two patrolling constables, Jean-Loup Lapointe and Stéphanie Pilotte, approached them.
Two bullets hit his internal organs, perforating the stomach and causing lacerations to the inferior vena cava, liver left lobe, and pancreas.
At 10:00 PM, the SPVM issued a press release in which it said: "Around 7:10 p.m., police patrolling the Montreal North sector intervened in Henri-Bourassa Park at the intersection of Pascal and Rolland streets.
At one point, a group movement was initiated with a number of men rushing the male and female police officers, assaulting them.
[3] On December 1, 2008, the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DCPP), Louis Dionne, held a press conference in the company of the Minister of Justice and Public Security, Jacques Dupuis, and Mayor Gérald Tremblay.
[6] For his part, Minister Dupuis announced the holding of a public inquiry, chaired by Judge of the Court of Québec Robert Sansfaçon coroner appointed for the occasion.
[10] The movement "Solidarity Montreal North" (a group represented by a city-linked PR firm[11]) also reacted positively, distributing to the media a statement supporting the holding of the inquest, even before the end press conference of DCPP.
During a protest against the officers' actions, riot police were dispatched after bonfires had been set in the streets of Montreal North on August 10 in retaliation to the event.
Quebec Superior Court Judge William Fraiberg ruled that the families' lawyers had failed too many times to meet deadlines, which caused unjustified delays.
[16] The event was one of the inspirations behind Sophie Deraspe's 2019 film Antigone, which adapted the ancient Greek play by Sophocles into a modern story of police brutality against immigrants.