Body found in parking lot ‘unrecognizable as human remains’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/04/2023 (1128 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Looking over a Point Douglas parking lot early Thursday, the manager of a nearby business saw “a pile of char, charred ashes.”

It turned out to be the burned body of a person the Winnipeg Police Service has yet to identity.

“I couldn’t, at that point in time, tell that it was a body — from where I was it wasn’t unrecognizable as human remains,” the manager said Friday. He requested the Free Press withhold his name and that of the firm’s to protect their business interests.

It was around 2 a.m., when the man got a phone call from WPS detectives, requesting access to his building in an industrial area of the inner-city neighbourhood, off Higgins Avenue, to obtain surveillance tape.

Later, after the sun began to rise, the manager accidentally got a glimpse of the grisly scene as he spoke with police outside.

WPS patrol officers responding to a call reporting the fire in the warehouse parking lot near MacDonald Avenue and Gomez Street had arrived at the scene at about 1 a.m. Thursday, finding one person dead, as the fire burned.

Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service personnel extinguished the flames before forensics investigators arrived, police said.

Homicide detectives are leading the investigation, which is at this point classified as a suspicious death. An autopsy is pending.

Police spokesman Const. Jason Michalyshen said late Friday he had no further updates to provide on the investigation.

Meantime, the manager is unsettled and disturbed by the gruesome scene so close to his workplace.

“It hurts,” he said. “It’s a human life, regardless of what their walk of life was like — don’t know age, don’t know sex, don’t know what was going on in their life.”

On Thursday, charred debris sat next to a partially burned box made of wooden pallets near the middle of the lot, where a forensic investigator was examining the scene.

The parking lot fence was lined with 22 yellow evidence markers to its back edge, where stairs lead down to the river walk.

Mid-day Friday, the police tape draped across the lot had been removed, but red paint marking footprints along the fence, where the evidence markers had sat the day prior, remained.

The manager said the business has experienced petty crime and other issues in the past — such as catalytic converter thefts, break-ins to the dumpsters or people burning plastic coatings off wires on the river bank to scrap copper.

Thursday’s incident, however, follows the discovery April 15 of the partial remains of a homicide victim on the nearby edge of the Red River.

Those remains, also yet to be publicly identified, were found in a wooded section of riverbank near Curtis Street and Higgins Avenue on the afternoon of April 15.

Police believe the victim was a woman, more than 20 years old, between five-feet and 5-5 tall, with a slight build and short, dark hair.

She had a Cesarean section scar and no upper or lower teeth, which police believe were missing before she died, based on a post-mortem examination.

Homicide unit Sgt. Wade McDonald said previously investigators were focused on finding out her name and informing her family of her death.

“It’s disturbing, and if it doesn’t affect somebody, there might be something wrong with that person,” the business manager said of both the deaths.

He added he’s grateful for an increased police presence in the area of late, as an unmarked WPS vehicle did a circle of the parking lot Friday afternoon.

erik.pindera@winnipegfreepress.com