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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

'Sweet, bubbly' woman mourned after fatal attack

By: Gabrielle Giroday and Julie Carl

Posted: 06/21/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

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Kaila Tran

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Wayne Glowacki / Winnipeg Free Press Kaila Tran was attacked near a car in the 100 block of Clayton Drive Wednesday.

A woman who died after being stabbed in a St. Vital parking lot Wednesday morning would "light up an entire room the second she walked in," a friend said.

The woman, identified by friends as Kaila Tran, 26, died after she was attacked in the 100 block of Clayton Drive. Police didn't confirm her identity.

"Anyone that's come across her knew how great of a person she was. She was energetic, positive," said a friend who worked with Tran for three years, via Twitter.

"She was like family," another friend told the Free Press. "She was a bubbly person, great person. She was everything you could ask for in a friend."

Tran worked for Teleco, according to the company's website.

Police received a call just after 7 a.m. about an injured person. Witnesses said neighbours heard the woman screaming, rushed to intervene and scared off the attacker.

Lois Coish, who's lived in the building opposite for 17 years, was standing outside when she heard the woman yell, "Leave me alone!" and then begin to scream.

"I thought he was hitting her. I didn't see a knife," Coish said.

Another neighbour, who lived in the same building as the woman and asked not to be identified, said he heard the woman's screams and rushed to the window. He saw the woman, who had apparently been getting into her car to go to work, on the ground with a man standing over her, stabbing her. As neighbours rushed from the building, the suspect ran off, the neighbour said.

Four or five people ran from the woman's building and others came from a building across the street. A neighbour got on a bike and chased the suspect as he ran along Clayton Drive, before deking toward the river and over an embankment. The cyclist was unable to follow.

At one point, the fleeing man dropped something and turned back to pick it up, said witness Kevin Olivier.

Winnipeg police spokesman Const. Jason Michalyshen said he wasn't aware if a weapon had been found. Police did not call Tran's death a homicide, instead treating it as suspicious.

Michalyshen had no word on any arrests. He said officers were trying to gather as much information at the scene as possible.

"I don't have enough details really to say, 'Yes, this was a manhunt,' " said Michalyshen. The police helicopter wasn't used in the case, he said.

As the man fled, neighbours performed first aid on the woman who had a cut hand, a stab wound to her shoulder near her neck and damage to her teeth. The woman was struggling to breathe and unable to talk, a witness said.

Olivier said the woman lived with her boyfriend, and her boyfriend's mother lives in a building across the street.

"It's all a little startling," a witness told the Free Press.

Friends wrote on her Facebook page, calling her a "loving and giving soul" and "one of the sweetest people I have ever had the honour of knowing out of this world."

Her sister posted pictures on Facebook with the words, "The invisible ties between sisters are the strongest bonds... forever missed but never forgotten."

-- with files from Jenny Ford

gabrielle.giroday@freepress.mb.ca julie.carl@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 21, 2012 A5

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