Montreal police investigate bullet hole found in entrance to Jewish school

Police are investigating after another building in Montreal’s Jewish community was struck by gunfire.

Montreal police (SPVM) said they received a 911 call Wednesday afternoon and responded to the Belz school on Hillsdale Road, near Van Horne Avenue, in the Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce borough. 

Police spokesperson Veronique Dubuc said officers found at least one bullet on the front of the building. It’s not clear if the shooting happened earlier on Wednesday or another day, she said.

Police say their investigation is ongoing.

‘It’s totally unacceptable’

Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante was among the political leaders who swiftly condemned the shooting on social media. 

“It is totally unacceptable that a Jewish school should once again be targeted. Anti-Semitism has no place in Montreal. The SPVM is on the scene to investigate and I am confident that they will once again find the culprit,” Plante wrote on X. 

“Schools should never be targets of violence,” wrote Elisabeth Prass, the Quebec Liberal MNA for D’Arcy-McGee, adding that antisemitism “is unacceptable in Quebec and our society.”

A joint statement on Wednesday from Federation CJA and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs Quebec denounced the shooting at the school. The two groups said “when decisive action is taken by those who govern us, these monstrous and barbaric acts come to an end. This is not the Montreal we want to live in!”

Last week, a 20-year-old man was charged in relation to a shooting at a Jewish school last fall. That school, Yeshiva Gedola, and another one, United Talmud Torahs of Montreal, were hit by gunfire last November.