Most of city’s homicides in 2015 considered solved

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This article was published 31/12/2015 (3706 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Twenty people were killed by homicide this year in Winnipeg, and police consider the majority of those cases solved.

While Manitoba maintains the highest homicide rate in Canada for the eighth consecutive year, Winnipeg is no longer a murder capital of the country.

The number of homicides in the city continues to drop, from 27 in 2013 to 26 in 2014 to 20 this year.

Seventeen of those 20 cases, or 85 per cent, are considered solved by police, according to data gathered by the Free Press. The analysis looks only at homicides and does not include people who are still missing.

No charges were laid in three cases:

• the fatal shooting of 32-year-old Garry Godson on April 20
• the stabbing death of 27-year-old Godfrey Virgil Hayden, who died April 17
• the stabbing death of 35-year-old Milton Brian Richard, who died May 16.

The majority of the victims were men, many of whom were aboriginal. Recently released Statistics Canada data show indigenous people — men and women — were more likely to be victims of homicide than non-indigenous Canadians, and aboriginal people in Manitoba were nine times more likely to be victims of homicide than aboriginal people in other provinces.

Of the four women who lost their lives to homicide this year, two were allegedly slain by romantic partners: Selena Keeper, 20, and Camille Runke, 49.

The cases, three weeks apart in October, prompted the provincial government to introduce legislation that bans abusers from owning firearms and makes it easier for victims of domestic violence to obtain court-ordered protection orders against their abusers.

Homicides in Winnipeg in 2015

= Solved homicides = Unsolved homicides