Montreal woman leads Summerside police on ID hunt

A woman, who gave Summerside police multiple fake identities after her arrest, has been sentenced.

The unusual case concluded on Dec. 4 after three trials on various charges, all of which took place on the same day at Summerside Provincial Courthouse.

The accused, Genevieve Crepault, 23, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to several of the charges against her, but disputed others and pleaded not guilty to them. She fired her lawyer, Trish Cheverie, just before the first of her trials was supposed to start.

In total the charges she either pleaded guilty to or was found guilty of include: possession of stolen property valued at more than $5,000, a 2017 Dodge Ram Truck; four counts of possession of stolen property valued at less than $5,000, all of which were IDs belonging to different women; two counts of obstructing a peace officer, driving while prohibited from doing so and theft of property valued less than $5,000.

Crepault was sentenced to serve 150 days in jail, 24 months of probation and must pay $900 in victim surcharges. She also received credit for 90 days already served since she was taken into custody.

Crepault’s involvement with police on P.E.I. started on Oct. 6 when Summerside police got a report of a Dodge Ram truck striking a parked car in a parking lot off Granville Street and driving away.

A Summerside Police Services officer found the truck parked nearby, turned on his vehicle’s lights and pulled up behind it to prevent it from backing up. As the officer was walking up to the side of the vehicle, the reverse lights came on again. Fearing the driver, which was Crepault, was going to strike him, the officer drew his service pistol and commanded the her to turn off the truck and raise her hands, which she did.

After she was arrested, Crepault gave the officer a name and date of birth and said her ID was in the truck.

The officer found multiple IDs and credit cards belonging to various women from New Brunswick and Quebec in the vehicle; including the one matching the name the officer had been given, but it was clearly not the woman in custody.

The officer confronted Crepault about the discrepancy, but she refused to provide her true identity.

Back at Summerside police headquarters Crepault was placed in an interview room after briefly speaking with a lawyer. When police returned to the room to speak with her, they found her sitting in another room, in the dark and she’d placed paper over the camera lenses in both rooms.

She provided a second name and date of birth and said she’d been born in the U.S. This name was also one of those on the IDs she’d had in her possession.

However, her story changed on some key points during an interview with police. She also misspelled the second name she’d given.

When police confronted her about the discrepancies and again about the IDs in her vehicle, she insisted that she knew all the women on the IDs and that they had all given her permission to use their documents.

Even after being told police had been in contact with the Montreal woman she was claiming to be, Crepaud still refused to admit she was anyone else.

Summerside police co-ordinated with RCMP in Moncton and Montreal and Quebec police to eventually establish that the woman they had in custody was not who she claimed to be, but was Crepault, originally of Montreal.

Police later determined that many of the IDs and other documents Crepault had in her possession were stolen from gym lockers while their owners were exercising. The locks had been cut to gain access. One of the theft charges Crepault was found guilty of stemmed from a similar incident on Oct. 5 at a Summerside gym.

Crepault had bought a one-day gym pass, using yet another ID that wasn’t hers, but was accused shortly thereafter of rummaging through a women’s purse in the locker room.

By the time the gym incident was reported to police, Crepault was already in custody.

Colin.MacLean@JournalPioneer.com

@JournalPMacLean