The ex-boyfriend of a Montreal woman who went missing last week has been charged with first-degree murder after a body presumed to be hers was found in a manhole on Saturday.

Cinthia Toussaint's ex-boyfriend had recently tried to persuade her to move back in with him, according to her mother. (Montreal police)

Cinthia Toussaint, a 23-year-old mother from the city's Ahuntsic area, was last seen early on May 17, when she dropped off a friend in the borough of Saint-Léonard. Toussaint told the friend she was going to meet her ex-boyfriend at the Taz skateboarding park in Saint-Michel.

The ex-boyfriend, 26-year-old Mario Romain, told police Toussaint never showed up.

Police scoured the area for two days but called off their search Wednesday.

Then on Saturday, a woman saw a body stuffed in a manhole near the skate park and called authorities.

Romain was arrested a few hours later.

"Many clues leads the investigator to believe that it's the body of Cinthia Toussaint, although we'll have to wait for the autopsy result to be sure that it's indeed her," Montreal police spokesman Daniel Lacoursière said Monday.

The autopsy is scheduled for later this week.

Pleads not guilty

Romain, the father of Toussaint's three-year-old son, appeared in a Montreal court Monday afternoon on the murder charge. He pleaded not guilty.

A group of Toussaint's family and friends, including her child, gathered outside the courthouse before the hearing.

"I've come for my daughter. I need my daughter," Toussaint's mother, Marie-Ange Auguste, said sitting on the ground and clutching a photo of the young mother.

After the hearing, the family said they were grief-stricken.

Toussaint was registered to begin studies in June to become a nurse's aide, her mother said in an interview last week.

Auguste also said Romain had recently tried to persuade Toussaint to move back in with him, but she said she told her daughter it was a bad idea.