'Good guy' gunned down

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Homicide victim Darren Swampy, 19. (FAMILY HANDOUT)

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Lee Brady Spence, 22, was shot dead early Saturday morning in the Centennial neighbourhood. (FAMILY HANDOUT)

Two young men are dead — one gunned down in the middle of the street — and a man has been arrested in connection with an early Saturday morning shooting within sight of the downtown Public Safety Building.

Dead from gunshot wounds to the upper and lower body are Darren Joey Swampy, 19, and Lee Brady Spence, 22.

The two men were taken to hospital in critical condition and died shortly after, said police.

Darryl Swampy, 25, said his cousin, Darren — who was known as D.J. — had started to get his life straight after a series of rough events. Darren Swampy was the father of a baby girl born in 2009.

The little girl died 10 months ago of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), said his cousin.

"He's a very, very energetic person, but after that happened, he kind of slowed down a little," he said.

"He was just starting to get things back on track for himself."

He'd also lost his mother to pneumonia when he was in his teens, said his cousin.

Recently, Darren Swampy had been working part-time at the Stock Exchange Hotel.

He'd had some trouble with the law as a youth, said his cousin, but had finished his probation. The two had grown up in the downtown area of the city, he said.

Darren Swampy had a lot of friends who lived in the area where he was ultimately shot.

"We grew up pretty much together when we were younger. (He was) basically a little brother to me... we were a poor family, so we liked to take care of each other when we could," he said. "He was a good guy, he helped out with kids in the family."

Spence, known to family and friends as Brady, had just moved back to Winnipeg from the reserve, said his older sister Lisa, who contacted the Free Press but didn't want her last name published. She saw him last Saturday at her daughter's eighth birthday party in Winnipeg.

"It was a great visit."

Lisa said he was living in the inner city and she didn't know any of his friends.

On Saturday, just before he died, residents along Elgin Avenue, just blocks from the Princess Avenue station, said they were awoken by yelling followed by gunshots about 2:40 a.m. Saturday. A patch of blood and the black baseball cap of one of the dead men still lay on Ellen Street, at the corner of Elgin Avenue, late Saturday morning.

"They were yelling at the top of their lungs," said a woman who lives on Elgin.

She got out of bed and looked out her window. There were three young men in dark clothing arguing with someone. "There was a lot of swearing," she said. The two sides dispersed and the woman went back to bed. She heard several gunshots shortly after. A minute or two later, she heard many more gunshots.

Another witness, who gave his name as Randy and who was staying in the apartment block at 425 Elgin Ave., said he heard eight shots.

"I looked out and saw there was a body down there" in the back lane beneath his apartment window, he said. A cellphone lay near the sprawled body.

Then he saw a second body in the middle of Ellen Street about 16 metres away. "He had a fair amount of blood underneath him," he said of the second victim.

Another resident of the apartment block, Valerie, said she saw a woman in a white puffy parka get out of a red compact car and run to one of the shooting victims.

The woman and a man, about 18, then ran northeast down Ellen Street to a house and threw snowballs at the window until someone let them in.

Valerie said police arrived quickly with tracking dogs and the dogs led them to the house the woman entered.

Police have arrested a 27-year-old man in connection with the shooting. The victims had been evicted from a house party on Ross Avenue, two blocks northeast of Elgin. The suspect had also been evicted from the same party separately.

A short time later, the men met up walking along Elgin. "The lone male suspect produced a firearm and discharged it in the direction of the victims," said police Const. Jason Michalyshen.

One senior woman in the apartment at 425 Elgin said "my cats just jumped off the bed" when the shots were fired. She looked out her window and saw a man she believed was the suspect running away.

"He was running through the park below on Ross Avenue and he stopped under a street light, and he looked back, and then ran between some buildings," she said.

She described him as about five-foot-two inches and aboriginal in appearance.

Defence lawyer Greg Brodsky said Saturday afternoon he's representing the man accused of the shooting deaths.

He wouldn't say where officers picked his client up.

"He's very anxious to meet these charges in a court of law," said Brodsky.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca

-- With files from Gabrielle Giroday and Carol Sanders

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 6, 2011 A3