Mother ran to dying son's side

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Cameron Walker was stabbed to death Friday night at a housing project near his Fort Richmond home. (FAMILY PHOTO)

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Cameron Walker's girlfriend Amber Chabot cries as she remembers her boyfriend Sunday. (JOE.BRYKSA@FREEPRESS.MB.CA )

There would be no final words for a mother and her son.

Cameron Walker, 16, lay bleeding in his mother's arms in a back lane Friday night outside a Fort Richmond housing complex after being stabbed in the chest.

He later died in hospital -- Winnipeg's third homicide victim of 2011.

Speaking to the Free Press on Sunday, Kim Walker said she knew before she even reached her son that it was bad. Sobbing, the words tumbled out.

"I ran to Cameron. The snow was so deep I couldn't get to him. I kept falling and Cam was lying in the snowbank. And I grabbed his head and I hugged him and I held him. And I screamed, 'Somebody call the police!'" she said.

"And I got his friend to put his hands in the holes to stop the blood."

Only minutes earlier, the friend who'd knelt beside them had raced to get Cameron's mother, Kim, from her apartment across the lane and guided her to the scene.

"His eyes were open when I held him," Kim said.

Cameron, who was stabbed about 11:25 p.m., had been involved in a dispute earlier in the day with friends at the same house, and had returned there in the evening. Police say Cameron eventually left, but a man followed him outside.

After an altercation, the teen was stabbed in the chest.

A 28-year-old man remains in custody, charged with second-degree murder.

Kim Walker told her story Sunday afternoon, surrounded by friends and family at a relative's home just outside of the city.

She said she hated the Manitoba Housing complex next door, hated that her son hung out with kids there. But she stayed there for five years because both her sons attended schools a block away.

Kim, a stay-at-home single mom, said Friday began like a normal day. She dropped her youngest son, 11, off at school, brought back McDonald's hash browns for Cameron and dropped the Grade 10 student off for morning classes at Fort Richmond Collegiate.

Lately, life had been looking up for her oldest son, said Kim. Cameron was spending less time at the housing complex and more time with his girlfriend, Amber Chabot.

Chabot said she had a creepy feeling about the complex, too. Cameron never took her to see his buddies there, and she tried to persuade him "not to go there with those kind of people," Amber said, through tears.

On Friday, after burgers, Cameron confessed to his mother he'd had a fight at the complex earlier in afternoon but was going back over to see his buddy. That was about 11 p.m.

"It was about half an hour later and I was doing the dinner dishes, just cleaning up, and his friend came running in the house," Kim recalled.

"(He said) 'Kim, Cam needs you and it's bad. He needs you to come now.' "

Cameron was no angel and his mother was the first to admit it. She registered him for a program at the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba when she caught him smoking pot.

"He wasn't proud he smoked pot," one cousin said.

Cameron was also known to police, his mother said. He had a juvenile record for theft, and officers were familiar with the family because the teen kept breaching probation.

At age 14, he became a father to a son he rarely saw. His ex-girlfriend's family didn't allow him to visit. At Christmas and birthdays, the Walkers left their gifts on the tyke's doorstep and rang the bell, Kim said.

Cameron also suffered from anxiety. He'd been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress, the result of waking up in the family home when it was burning down one night in 2002. He was only eight, and had to run to neighbours for help.

She wants people to remember the good things about her son: how he loved rap music, his two cats, the elderly and children.

"I know that life is never going to be the same. I just wish somebody had listened to me when I said something is going to happen at that house," she said. "I just didn't think it was going to be my boy. He was so big and strong."

Funeral arrangements have not been made. An autopsy is scheduled for this morning.

City police arrested Matthew Craig Krasny, 28, of Winnipeg and charged him with second-degree murder.

The WPS homicide unit continues to investigate.

"It's really an unfortunate circumstance. We have a young life being lost," WPS spokesman Const. Jason Michalyshen told reporters Saturday.

"These types of events can occur anywhere with individuals making some poor choices."

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 31, 2011 A3