Shoplifting incident ends in armed robbery charge

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/01/2022 (1586 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two workers at a Winnipeg grocery store had a pistol pointed at them Thursday morning after confronting a shoplifter.

“He walked in, filled up a basket — a good chunk of meat — and just walked out the door,” Food Fare owner Munther Zeid told the Free Press on Friday.

“My brother and one of my supervisors followed him outside. They stopped him at the street at Burnell (the store is at Portage Avenue and Burnell Street), right outside our parking lot, and he pulled out a gun.”

They backed off and called police around 9:30 a.m.

A traffic division supervisor spotted a male suspect near Minto Street and Wolever Avenue within the hour. Police said Friday officers recovered merchandise but didn’t find a gun.

Some missing meat wasn’t located, Zeid said, but the store got back two packages of cookies, two packages of pistachios, two packages of pudding, bananas, a package of face masks and a package of kiwis. Also found were some Pizza Pops, a king-size can of Pepsi, Crackerjacks, Powerade, chocolate milk, whipping cream and a package of bacon.

Zeid’s well-known in the city for hard tactics against shoplifters — and has brandished the baseball bat once kept behind the counter at one of his stores for television news cameras. The owner of the family-run local chain of five stores said the Thursday incident made him furious, but strengthened his resolve.

“If I let all the theft happen at my store, I would not survive, I would be closed. The only reason we’re surviving and not feeling the theft is because we deal with it hands-on. Lately, our hands-on has been to grab ‘em and get our stuff back, and out the door he goes. No message sent. Well, after (Thursday’s) incident, messages will be sent,” he said.

“Police came because of the word ‘gun’ was mentioned. If ‘gun’ wasn’t mentioned, they wouldn’t have came. Do I blame the police? No, they’ve got a lot on their plate, we all do.”

Last week, his brother was threatened in one store with a machete during a shoplifting incident, Zeid said, adding he’s fed up.

“Frankly, I’d like nothing more than to be able to have a weapon on me. He pulls out a machete, I pull out a gun.”

Anecdotally, theft is rising again after a recent lull, Zeid said.

The latest available Statistics Canada data show a relatively steady rate of police-reported shoplifting thefts countrywide over the past 20 years: around 300 incidents per 100,000 population, then a sharp spark upward to 400 in 2019 before a decline in 2020.

“You try so hard to make a buck, and you get people just walking in and taking. It’s very bothering,” Zeid said. “It’s my money; my family, my staff all work hard and it’s disappointing that we have to work even harder to try to keep it.”

Daniel Edward Simpson, 29, of Winnipeg, has been charged with armed robbery with a firearm, multiple weapons offences, two counts of failing to comply with a release order, two warrants for theft, a warrant for robbery, and failing to comply with a release order.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca