Montreal man pricked by dirty needle picking up his keys

While unlocking his garage door, Montreal man Luc Bruneau dropped his keys in a pile of leaves and is now waiting for test results after he was pricked by a dirty needle.

“I tried to pick them up and I felt a terrible pain in my hand,” he said. “At the time, I didn't know what it was, and then I had to look at it. Then I saw that I had the needle fully inserted in my hand.”

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He was at his rental property on Du Havre Street near Frontenac Metro in the Sainte-Marie neighbourhood when it happened.

When he got there last week, two men were injecting drugs in front of the garage.

He assumes that the used needle was theirs because he said they came back and said, ‘you found what we were looking for’ and pulled it out of his hand.

“I froze,” said Bruneau. “It's one of the rare time in my life I could not say a word. I could not say anything.”

Bruneau rushed to the hospital with a gash in his hand along with a strange feeling. He said doctors told him it that he was probably injected with fentanyl.

The cut is now healing and he is on heavy medication for HIV and hepatitis.

Bruneau now has to wait three months to find out if he was infected.

“I'm having good days and bad days,” he said.

Bruneau said the neighbourhood in question just east of the Jacques Cartier Bridge is getting worse. He said drug users often use the Jardin des Consolations park across the street behind the Jean-Claude-Malepart Community Centre. It is an area where children often play.

“It's not a place where we should tolerate that,” said Bruneau.

He added that he feels the City of Montreal is doing nothing to clean the area up.

“The city hall is quiet,” he said. “Nobody called me. I tried to I went to the police station. They did not take my name or anything.”

When asked about the issue, Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante said the city is working on the problem and hired private security in boroughs where there have been complaints about drug use in public.

She added that there is no quick fix.

In the meantime, Bruneau waits stressed, hoping the same thing doesn’t happen to someone else.