Police seek shooter who wounded two outside Bar Italia

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This article was published 29/05/2018 (3030 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A man and a woman are in hospital after a shooting outside Bar Italia on Corydon Avenue early Tuesday.

Winnipeg police said they received a report of shots being fired in the 700 block of Corydon Avenue at about 12:40 a.m., and when they arrived they found an injured 37-year-old man and a 28-year-old woman.

Police said the man is in critical condition while the woman is in stable condition.

Officers closed Cockburn Street between Corydon and McMillan Avenue at 7:30 a.m., with police focusing their efforts on the back alley between the two streets and directly behind Bar Italia.

Dozens of police evidence tags were placed around the alley. One officer took numerous photos of the scene while other officers monitored the perimeter.

Three cars in a row in a taped-off area had damage to their front-right headlights, two looked to have been smashed out while the third was just cracked. It’s unclear whether they’re related to the incident.

No arrests have been made.

Police are asking anyone with information to contact the homicide unit at 204-986-6508 or Crime Stoppers at 204-786-TIPS (8477).

No one from Bar Italia returned messages for comment.

Craig Kitching, president of the Corydon BIZ, said “it’s unfortunate when somebody gets hurt, but I don’t think it reflects on the neighbourhood as a whole.”

Kitching said no one knows much about the incident other than it occurred outside. He didn’t want to comment about other incidents involving Bar Italia through the years.

Coun. Jenny Gerbasi, the area councillor who also sits on the board of the Corydon BIZ, said in an email “It is a very unfortunate thing to happen but seems like an isolated incident.”

For years Bar Italia was an Italian-style coffee shop serving cappuccinos and gelati, but then it became more of a restaurant and regular bar with a long seasonal patio alongside its outer wall.

Along with those changes have come other violent incidents late at night.

A man in his early 20s was shot in the leg and arm by a drive-by shooting outside Bar Italia following a dispute inside in December, 2003.

Bar Italia bouncer Nicholas Somers was charged with manslaughter after 33-year-old Gary Rent died after being punched in May, 2008. Somers was later acquitted by a jury after accepting he acted in self defence.

And two men were stabbed outside the bar in January and rushed to hospital in critical condition, but later upgraded to stable. That incident is still under investigation.

Kristianne Dechant, of the Liquor and Gaming Authority of Manitoba, said Bar Italia has never been issued with a compliance order for any violations.

She said she couldn’t specifically speak about the shooting incident outside Bar Italia.

But Dechant noted that under the Liquor and Gaming Control Act, licensees, including restaurants and bars, have to provide security to not “allow or permit disorderly persons to be in the licensed premises or in the immediate vicinity outside of the licensed premises.”

She said while liquor inspectors work with licensees to make sure they have good security processes, sometimes disorderly, violent and/or criminal activities take place that are not related to the licensed establishment, but just happen to occur nearby.

“In these cases, this is not activity that licensees can affect or control.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca