Community holds vigil for Montreal-area 16-year-old who died after stabbing

Friends and family of the slain 16-year-old who was stabbed near a high school on Montreal's West Island walked together with candles on Thursday night.

Some wore hockey jerseys to recall the sport Lucas Gaudet played before the stabbing near St-Thomas High School in Pointe Claire. He died two days later.

His family wanted to send a message a month to the date the Grade 10 student was killed.

"If I have to, I'm going to each and every school and talk at the auditoriums and demand for change. We need something to change and it starts with our kids," said his mother Lynne Baudouy. "We need more compassion, we need more thinking of others like Lucas. Lucas always thought of others before himself."

Youth violence has seen a sharp rise in Montreal in the past year and a few hundred met in the parking lot of John Rennie High School, where Lucas was a student, on Thursday.

They then walked in a path which organizers described as his final route from John Rennie to St-Thomas where he was stabbed on Feb. 8 after a fight with several teens. A Montreal-area teen has been charged with second-degree murder.

Gaudet was the fifth teen violently killed in the past year, and the City of Montreal, police and community groups have been holding meetings to find solutions.

Measures are expected to be announced on March 31.