Police didn't suspect Quebec man was 'dangerous' when he and his daughters disappeared

WARNING: This article contains distressing details.

Hours before Norah and Romy Carpentier, ages 11 and six, went missing on July 8, 2020, they ate dinner with their grandmother, Gaétane Tremblay, outside her home.

She said everything about that summer day was normal until 9 p.m.

On the second day of a coroner's inquiry into the event, Tremblay tearfully recalled how the girls' father, Martin Carpentier, took them out for ice cream at 8 p.m. and just "never came back."

Carpentier disappeared with his daughters and triggered one of the longest Amber Alerts in the province's history before the girls' bodies were found three days later in a wooded area.

The inquiry, led by coroner Luc Malouin, has heard from people who were close to Carpentier that they had sensed a change in him in the weeks before he disappeared with his daughters — he seemed low, had lost weight, wasn't sleeping well and was concerned about losing custody rights.

But many of those same friends and family members could not believe he would hurt the girls and some did not immediately share their observations with police, who did not see any reason to initiate an Amber Alert, witnesses have testified.

The night her son-in-law disappeared, Tremblay called his cell phone. The voice that answered was a police officer, who informed her that Carpentier's car had crashed along Highway 20 in Saint-Apollinaire, Que.

At first, police thought the father and daughters had walked away from the crash. But by the next day, searches were underway.

A week after the girls' bodies were discovered, Carpentier was found dead. A coroner reported he had likely killed the girls with a blunt object on July 9 before taking his own life.

The inquiry, set to last at least a month, aims to reveal the circumstances of the girls' deaths.

Tremblay testified that the disappearance of Carpentier, Romy and Norah didn't make sense to their family initially because "Martin was an integral part of our family."

On Monday, the girls' mother, Amélie Lemieux, testified that her ex-husband had been a good father and only "became dangerous the moment he killed my kids."

Vincent Poirier, a Sûreté du Québec officer, was one of the first responding officers on the scene following the accident.