Dangerous offender status sought

CROWN prosecutors intend to apply to have a convicted killer, who also admitted his guilt in an assault on a stranger at The Forks and a robbery at a local beer vendor, designated as a dangerous offender.

Daniel Christopher Dumas, who is in his mid-30s, pleaded guilty to assault causing bodily harm and robbery in front of provincial court Judge Donovan Dvorak on Monday for the attacks on June 6 and 7, 2025. He will be sentenced at a later date.

Prosecutor Monique Cam said the Crown plans to apply for a dangerous offender designation for Dumas, which, if granted, could result in him being given an indefinite prison sentence.

“The Crown does intend to make an application at a future date … for a remand for assessment to have Mr. Dumas assessed by a court-ordered assessor for the purpose of pursuing a dangerous offender application,” Cam said.

If given indefinite time, parole officials would review the sentence after seven years, and then again every two years, to determine if and when he could safely leave prison.

Dvorak granted Cam’s request for a court order to compel the Correctional Service of Canada to release records on Dumas for the assessment.

He is currently in Stony Mountain Institution as a federal prisoner. Dumas’s lawyer, Anthony Kavanagh, did not indicate in court Monday what sentence he might seek for his client.

Dumas was unlawfully at large from federal prison at the time of the June 2025 attacks.

He achieved statutory release — which most federal prisoners are automatically eligible for at two-thirds of their sentence — on New Year’s Eve in 2024. He quickly absconded and a warrant went out for his arrest.

Months later, at about 11:15 p.m. on June 6, 2025, Dumas was sitting near an outdoor canopy at The Forks, with a man and a woman, when he saw a man he did not know walking by, said Cam, as she read out an agreed statement of facts.

The victim heard someone say “hey” or “hi” as he walked past Dumas, and several witnesses then heard two people shouting.

“Dumas had rushed (the victim), pulled him by his backpack and punched him in the head, which caused (the victim) to fall to the ground,” said Cam.

Dumas then kicked the victim four or five times in the stomach and head and punched him three or four times in the head, said the prosecutor.

Dumas then took the victim’s turban, which had fallen off, and left the area with his companions, walking along the river toward Bonnycastle Park on Assiniboine Avenue.

The victim was taken to Health Sciences Centre, where he was diagnosed with head trauma and a concussion. He was knocked unconscious in the attack.

Dumas later told police he did not like that the victim had walked near his friend, so he attacked him. Dumas also told police he did not initially realize what he stole was a turban, adding he felt bad about it, because, “obviously, that’s his culture,” Cam said, quoting from Dumas’s police interview.

After the attack at The Forks, Dumas went to an Assiniboine Avenue apartment to drink at about 11:30 p.m. with his girlfriend and a female friend, before taking a cab just before midnight to the Sherbrook Inn on Westminster Avenue, said Cam. (The hotel has since been renamed.)

A female stranger walked into the vendor while Dumas and his girlfriend were inside. His girlfriend decided she “did not like the look” of the woman, so grabbed her by the hair, leading Dumas to separate the two, Cam said.

But the fight continued and Dumas punched the woman in the face and head several times, kicked her, grabbed her by the hair and kneed her in the head, said Cam. He took the woman’s purse and left.

Later that morning, at about 1:40 a.m., Dumas opened the gate to the backyard of a home on Montrose Street, then tried to go in a back door, but it was locked.

A month later, Winnipeg police learned Dumas was at his girlfriend’s apartment on Jefferson Avenue. When police knocked on the door early on July 6, he jumped from the third-story window of her suite and ran as officers chased him.

Dumas swung his fist at two officers who got close to him, before police used a Taser on him as he tried to climb a fence before he was arrested.

Prior to his statutory release late in 2024, Dumas was sentenced to two years less a day in June 2024 for a February 2022 assault with a knife committed while he was on an earlier conditional release from prison.

He was first sent to federal prison for 11 years in 2013, after he pleaded guilty to manslaughter for his part in the beating death of 21-year-old Tyler St. Paul in Milner Ridge jail in 2011.

St. Paul, Dumas and several others were members of the Most Organized Brothers street gang. St. Paul told the gang’s leader that he wanted to leave, so the leader ordered Dumas and the others to give him a beating. The brutal, 10-minute thrashing killed St. Paul.

Dumas’s initial prison sentence was later extended to 12 years, eight months. He committed several other offences while behind bars, resulting in additional prison time.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca