‘When officers arrived, it was mayhem’ Mounties help injured while breaking up wild, social media-fuelled party outside city By: Erik Pindera Posted: 12:07 PM CST Monday, Mar. 6, 2023 Last Modified: 8:52 AM CST Tuesday, Mar. 7, 2023 Updates

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An out-of-control house party in the Rural Municipality of Rosser in late February resulted in multiple injuries and thousands of dollars in damage.

Headingley RCMP were called to the party at about 11:30 p.m. on Feb. 24, including for a report of shots fired. Officers found a chaotic scene at the vacation home rental on a property just northwest of Winnipeg.

“When officers arrived, it was mayhem,” Manitoba RCMP spokeswoman Tara Seel said Monday.

She said so many people — mostly teens — were already fleeing that RCMP don’t know how many had been at the party, which was advertised on social-media platform Snapchat.

But Seel said it was more than a few dozen.

“It was a pretty packed house — and it was a three-storey house,” she said.

People were fleeing the property on foot and in cars, and many youths were inside the home, which was littered with empty liquor bottles.

Inside, a teen girl asked Mounties for help, as her friend needed emergency medical assistance because of a drug overdose. Outside, officers found a teen boy who had been assaulted. Both were taken to hospital with serious injuries, where another male was already receiving treatment for an assault.

Mounties did not find anyone with gunshot injuries or locate any firearms.

“But the report did come in as shots fired so, for all we know at this point, there could have been shots fired and those people fled the scene,” she said.

“So we’re looking for anyone who has any information or who may have been injured that night to contact us.”

Seel said that securing the home and looking for victims was the RCMP’s immediate priority because of the report of gunshots. Officers didn’t set up a roadblock to stop party-goers from fleeing.

Some officers cleared the home’s three floors while other officers cleared the roadway to allow emergency medical responders to access to the property, she said.

The homeowners were not aware the massive party had been planned in their rental house, she said.

On Monday, few remnants of the chaos remained on the property on a rural road just off of Provincial Trunk Highway 190, and no one was home.

A railing on the steps at the front of the small, baby-blue house was broken. An empty shot glass and bottle of Smirnoff Ice vodka cooler were littered on the snow-covered lawn, along with spent fireworks.

Parts of a used cannabis pipe were smashed on the driveway, where the road was slick and ruts remained in the snow.

Randy Emms lives with his family across the road from the party house.

“It was close to 12 o’clock and I heard the dogs barking and lights started flashing in the windows,” said Emms, 17.

“There was a big party going on — a bunch of people walking up and down the road, parking in front of (the) house and they kept turning into the driveway to turn their cars around, so I went outside to see what was going on.”

About a half-hour later, he saw about a dozen RCMP cars, a fire truck and an ambulance arrive.

“I was just… worried someone (overdosed) or someone got hurt,” he said.

Emms said the home was purchased a few months ago and his family hasn’t met the new owners. He noted no one has been living in the house, located on a road with residences mostly owned by retirees.

It is the second large-scale youth party tied to wide-open social media invitations that RCMP have had to respond to in recent months, Seel noted.

Officers faced racial slurs and were assaulted by teens after being called to a massive gathering in East St. Paul last October where RCMP cruiser cars were damaged. At least one teen girl was injured in what RCMP described as an attempted sexual assault.

Multiple people have since been tracked down via social media posts, arrested and charged with offences relating to the incident.

Seel said officers received a different response at the Rosser party.

“There were several youth who were very grateful, asking us for assistance,” she said. “It was a very different vibe that way, but very concerning when you see a house party like this, and the level of violence escalated quickly.”

RCMP are concerned with what occurs at the social-media-organized parties, she said.

“With people who don’t know each other, the tensions can rise. No one feels any sense of obligation or respect for the residence itself, it doesn’t belong to anyone they know, they were invited off social media — so there’s a lack of connection,” she said.

“You don’t know many people at the party, you don’t know who’s throwing the party, you don’t know the residents. There’s so many risks here to young people attending that our advice is, to anyone who sees those invitations, stay as far away as you can and advise the police immediately.”

Mounties ask anyone with information or who was a victim to call the Headingley detachment at 204-888-0358 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-8477.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @erik_pindera