Attacker wanted role in MMIWG crisis: lawyer

Minutes after he was arrested for sexually assaulting an Indigenous woman in his home, a Winnipeg man facing deportation boasted to police that Canadian laws didn’t apply to him and threatened to drive the victim to the edge of the city and leave her to freeze.

Gilbert Nuamah, 37, pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count each of sexual assault and forcible confinement. He remains in custody and will be sentenced at a later date following the completion of a court-ordered report looking into his personal background.

“He clearly does not view Indigenous women as people,” Crown attorney Laura Martin told provincial court Judge Anne Krahn when Nuamah entered his guilty pleas Feb. 19.

“The state of our country in terms of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls is a state of crisis, and this is someone who is actively telling this court he wants to participate in that,” Martin said.

Court heard the victim had been drinking with Nuamah and others at Nuamah’s Homewood Drive home during the evening on Dec. 27, 2025 when she called her brother to pick her up. Upon learning she was leaving, Nuamah dragged the woman to a bedroom, locked the door behind him and sexually assaulted her.

When the woman’s brother arrived, people in the house denied she was there, prompting the man to call police.

Police arrived and knocked on the locked bedroom door.

“F—k off and mind your own business… I need five more minutes,” Nuamah yelled.

Nuamah tried to barricade the door before police broke it down and found Nuamah naked from the waist down and the victim standing in a corner appearing “shocked,” Martin said.

During the drive to police headquarters, Nuamah asked officers: “Is it illegal to take a drunk s—-w home from the bar and try to f—k her?”

Nuamah threatened that when released he would “take (the victim) and some other s—-ws out to the Perimeter and let them freeze.”

Court heard Nuamah is from Ghana and had previously lived in the United States before coming to Canada in 2017. At the time of his arrest, Nuamah had been ordered deported and was living in Canada illegally. He has no prior criminal record.

“I’m not even a Canadian citizen… so your laws don’t apply to me,” he told police.

Nuamah was released on bail but was taken back into custody a short time later after he failed to surrender his passport. Martin successfully argued for his continued detention at a Jan. 11 bail hearing before provincial court Judge Sandy Chapman.

“The Crown has significant concerns for the safety of the community of vulnerable Indigenous women and males and very concerned (Nuamah) will flee the jurisdiction,” Martin told Chapman.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca