HSC staff rush to help man attacked with machete

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This article was published 24/02/2023 (1031 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Health Sciences Centre staff came to the aid of a bloodied victim who was injured by a machete-wielding man close to the Winnipeg hospital campus Thursday afternoon.

A witness told the Free Press he called 911 after noticing a trail of blood as the wounded man stumbled across Notre Dame Avenue near Pearl Street at about 4:30 p.m.

It appeared the victim had been stabbed or slashed with a machete during the daylight incident, the witness wrote in an email.

He was the first of two people to be assaulted with a machete by a group of suspects in the Daniel McIntyre area, the Winnipeg Police Service said Friday.

The man was treated by hospital staff and paramedics from the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service on a sidewalk on Pearl, just north of Notre Dame and steps from buildings on the HSC campus.

Police spokesman Const. Jay Murray said officers were called to a report of two males fighting in the 600 block of Notre Dame.

One of the males was armed with a machete and the other was injured, said Murray.

The machete-wielding male fled before officers arrived.

“Upon arrival, officers located an injured male in his 30s in the area being treated by off-duty hospital staff and WFPS paramedics,” Murray wrote in an email.

The victim was in stable condition when he was taken to hospital.

While investigating, police learned a group of people who were involved in the incident assaulted a woman in her 30s with the machete while they fled the scene on Notre Dame, said Murray.

The woman did not report any injuries and was seemingly unharmed, he said.

No one has been charged as of Friday.

Crimes involving machetes are not specifically tracked by Winnipeg police. Machete-related incidents are included in all knife types in annual reports.

In 2021, the most recent year where data is available, city police received 1,199 reports of violent crimes which were committed using a knife.

It was a decrease of 16 per cent compared with 2020 and about seven per cent lower than the five-year average.

Knives accounted for 11 per cent of violent crimes involving a weapon.

About one in five knife crimes could not be solved because the victim did not want to participate, according to police.

Earlier this month, an attack in St. James left a 52-year-old man with a life-altering injury to one of his legs.

Police said the victim was followed and slashed twice by a machete-wielding suspect, after he got off a bus at Ness Avenue and Mount Royal Road on Feb. 9.

An 18-year-old man from Kenora is facing charges, including aggravated assault and failing to comply with a probation order.

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @chriskitching