Star of Courage
Awarded on: 1974-02-25
Invested on: 1975-02-14
Evelyne Letêcheur, a newspaper columnist of Montreal risked her life in helping persuade an armed fugitive to release a 12-year-old girl, whom he was holding hostage, and to surrender to the police in Ste-Thérèse, Quebec on October 12, 1971. In his attempt to flee after an armed robbery, the criminal shot one of the two police officers who had intercepted him. He then took refuge in a home, where he held the girl hostage. Shortly thereafter, the police surrounded the house and tried in vain to reason with him. The assailant demanded that certain people, among them Evelyne Letêcheur, be summoned to the house to negotiate with him. Mrs. Letêcheur, after talking with the attacker on the telephone and approaching the window where he was positioned, went into the house. During lengthy negotiations, in which other people who went with her took part, she offered herself as a hostage in place of the girl, and finally succeeded, thanks to her selfless humanitarianism, in persuading the criminal to put down his gun and surrender.