Hélène Brunet sits in a café with her back to the door, a gutsy move for someone on a public crusade against the Hells Angels and other ruthless biker gangs.
"I'm not intimidated," the 32-year-old waitress said. "How can you be afraid after you've had four bullets pumped into you? I came so close to death, nothing scares me any more."
Ms. Brunet limps and purplish bullet wounds scar her right leg. A little over a year ago, she was serving a pair of customers in a Montreal restaurant when a man burst in and opened fire.
Suddenly, Ms. Brunet became an unwilling participant in Quebec's treacherous biker wars. As the gunman started shooting, one of the customers grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her into his human shield, she said.
She fell to the ground and felt the searing heat of bullets rip through her body. Her tibia shattered. Blood began to pool around her.
"I thought it was all over," she said. "I was going to die."
But she survived and spent a month in hospital, much of it under 24-hour police guard. Then Ms. Brunet did what no one has done before: She set out to hold the criminal underworld accountable.
Since the shooting, Ms. Brunet has spoken out against biker gangs and filed a $500,000 lawsuit against Normand Descôteaux, the man she accuses of grabbing her. This week, at the annual meeting in Quebec City of the National Association of Professional Police, Ms. Brunet called for better protection for the victims of organized crime.
"You don't fire on innocent people," she said in an interview. "But these people are firing in our streets. They're firing in our restaurants. They're destroying our lives. There have already been victims and there are going to be more."
Most of the more than 160 people killed in biker hostilities in Quebec since 1994 had links to the criminal underworld.
But the battles have also killed or maimed more than 20 innocent victims, from an 11-year-old boy killed by car-bomb shrapnel to two prison guards ambushed on their way home. Last September, Journal de Montréal reporter Michel Auger was shot in a parking lot after writing an exposé on biker activity. He survived five bullets.
"The biker war is a problem for all society," he said. "People say it's not important because it's just criminals fighting criminals. But there are 20 of us who can say that that's simply not the case."
Ms. Brunet was dragged into the bloodbath while working at the Eggstra! restaurant in north-end Montreal. On July 7, 2000, at around 9:30 a.m., she spotted a rough-hewn customer slowly eating a fruit salad.
He was an unmistakable bacon-and-eggs man, she thought. She became suspicious and kept an eye on him. At another table, she says, a man sat alone: Mr. Descôteaux. He was joined by a man identified as Robert Savard, a loan shark and reputed confidant of Maurice (Mom) Boucher, the notorious biker kingpin.
Once Mr. Savard sat down, the man with the fruit salad picked up his cellphone, she recalls.
Soon, a brazen hit was under way in broad daylight in a crowded family-style restaurant.
A man appeared in the doorway and pulled on a pair of black gloves. He yanked on a facemask. He pulled out a gun.
"I said to myself, this is a joke," Ms. Brunet recalled. "This is something you see in the movies. Or in the United States. But not here."
Mr. Savard was fatally shot in the back of the head and slumped forward onto the table. Then, according to Ms. Brunet's claim, Mr. Descôteaux seized her from behind.
She said she tried to break free, but the two fell to the ground.
"I was used like an object. I was no more important than a table."
As she recovered in hospital, Ms. Brunet decided to attack the attackers. She contacted 10 lawyers before finding someone willing to represent her in her lawsuit. She receives worker's compensation and, between physiotherapy and psychotherapy sessions, she tries to publicize the insidious effects of the biker turf war.
"It's the principle. It's a question of justice. I have always believed you never hurt others," she said.
She speaks out in the media and wants to apply to become a police officer. After addressing the police group this week, she met Quebec Public Security Minister Serge Ménard and the Liberal public-security critic, MNA Jacques Dupuis.
"She's been the victim of the war between the Hells Angels and other groups, and she's an innocent victim," said Mr. Dupuis, a former Crown prosecutor. "She deserves her day in court, and she's got a lot of courage."
Mr. Descôteaux, who was also struck by five bullets in the armed attack, has sought a motion to dismiss Ms. Brunet's lawsuit. His lawyer, Michel Héroux, said yesterday that the contention that his client used the waitress as a human shield was "an invention of the police."
In a separate matter, Mr. Descôteaux faces 13 criminal charges including extortion, uttering death threats, charging criminal interest rates and possessing a prohibited weapon, a 9 mm Glock pistol. Contrary to Ms. Brunet's claim, Mr. Descôteaux is not a sympathizer of the Hells Angels, Mr. Héroux said.