Who is Christopher LaVoie? Man behind ‘4 Days’ reality shows has history of run-ins with police, dubious business ventures
It’s a little ironic for Christopher LaVoie, the man behind the Four Days reality TV show, which has been a lightning rod for controversy for more than three years, because LaVoie was once a criminal.
He spent time in prison between 1991 and 1997 in the UK for crimes including assault, possession and distribution of drugs, car theft and receiving stolen goods, according to the BBC.
LaVoie was born Christopher Rousselot to a French Canadian mother and a father who was a black Jamaican and later a Jamaican immigrant who was killed by police decades before LaVoie was born.
His mother told the BBC that he was a healthy child but was hit by a car at age 7.
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“He was left with a paralyzed right hand. He was paralyzed but he is a very sociable person and very good at interacting with other people,” she said, adding that he was often known as “Roo” as a nickname.
“I am thankful for a very caring mother who took him to the hospital for treatment,” she said.
It was a difficult time in LaVoie’s life, though, as a child, according to The New York Times in 1996, as he “frightened the neighborhood children by riding around his bicycle on the back of cars or by jumping out of windows.”
He was arrested for the last time at age 20.
LaVoie appeared on the MTV reality show in 2006, and he’s since appeared on other reality shows such as The Apprentice, Queer Eye and Project Runway.
In July, LaVoie was sentenced to four months in prison in a Canada District Court after pleading guilty to drug possession. Police said in court there was found in his possession 5.7 grams of marijuana, 2 grams of hashish and a small amount of ecstasy. Police said he had also recently been charged in Quebec with marijuana distribution.