Police arrest two men accused in city’s final homicide of 2025

Homicide detectives have charged two men after the death of a 42-year-old man on Christmas Eve in Winnipeg.

Winnipeg Police Service officers were called to an apartment complex on Lydia Street between Bannatyne and William avenues on Dec. 21, where they found Michael Allen Harrington badly injured. He died in hospital on Dec. 24.

A 27-year-old man was arrested for aggravated assault the next day and held in custody.

Police identified him Tuesday as Conrad Jesse Fiddler. He was arrested again at the Winnipeg Remand Centre on Monday and charged with manslaughter.

Court records show Fiddler is also accused of robbery with an imitation weapon, possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose, drug possession and three court order breaches, all of which were alleged to have occurred on Dec. 21, the same night Harrington was assaulted in the Lydia Street apartment.

Detectives found their second suspect on Isabel Street last Thursday. Larry Walter Richard-Hall, 19, has been charged with second-degree murder.

The slaying marked the 22nd — and last — homicide in Winnipeg of 2025.

An online fundraiser, set up by Harrington’s family to help with expenses before his death, said he had been stabbed.

Loved ones described Harrington in an obituary as someone with a passion for adventure and an “amazing sense of (humour) but a pure gentle soul.”

He was originally from southern Ontario and only recently moved to Winnipeg, a relative said last week.

Richard-Hall has one prior adult conviction in Manitoba.

He pleaded guilty last April after he was found in possession of property obtained by crime over $5,000 — specifically, a motor vehicle — in February. The time he served awaiting court since his arrest, 40 days, was counted as his sentence.

Fiddler has several convictions dating back to 2017, including multiple court order breaches, assaults with a weapon and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose, court records show.

He’s also before the court on several other charges, including mischief, assault with a weapon and uttering threats from September, and multiple court order breaches.

Most recently, Fiddler pleaded guilty to an assault with a weapon in April last year.

Fiddler had been over at a friend’s home on Selkirk Avenue on Dec. 8, 2024, when an argument began between the two of them. Fiddler pulled out a machete and threatened his friend with it, before later throwing a small plastic scale at her forehead, causing bleeding.

He was bound by a bail order at the time, which he breached, court heard.

He was given time served and probation.

His earlier conviction for assault with a weapon, in 2019, was significantly more violent and involved an attack on a girlfriend.

Fiddler was born in Norway House, but grew up in the Garden Hill First Nation area, before being taken into child welfare care and bouncing around group homes for several years of his youth, court heard.

He spent a significant period of time homeless.

He pleaded guilty to one of his weapons offences after getting into argument with the mother of a friend, with whom he was staying at a Pritchard Avenue home in August 2024, over paying her rent.

Police officers found him on Selkirk Avenue and Battery Street with a homemade gun, along with an axe and some fentanyl, tucked away in his backpack. He told his lawyer he carried the gun for protection in the rough neighbourhood.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca