Body found in rooming house; armed man among three arrested

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This article was published 15/02/2024 (609 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Homicide detectives are investigating after a man was found dead in a rooming house on Magnus Avenue early Thursday.

After receiving a call about armed men within the building, police rushed to the residence at 374 Magnus, just east of Salter Street, at about 2:40 a.m.

Patrol officers and the police helicopter found three men running from the residence and arrested the trio, finding a firearm on one of them, the Winnipeg Police Service said Thursday.

The officers then found the dead man, whose name has yet to be released, inside a suite.

Police said his autopsy is pending. Homicide detectives are treating the death as a slaying.

Later on Thursday, forensics investigators came and went from behind yellow crime-scene tape that blocked off the house’s front lawn. On the second floor, investigators took photos and looked down from an open window to the side entrance on the east side while officers in an idling patrol car guarded the scene.

Sebastian Harper, a 21-year-old who’s lived across the street with his girlfriend and their children for about four months, said his surveillance camera captured police officers knocking on his door at about 3:40 a.m., when he and the family were asleep.

“We noticed all the tape was up, and we had a feeling something happened, and the forensics van showed up,” said Harper.

He said he and his family did not know any of the people — at least two adults and several children — who lived in the suites in the house across the street.

“We keep to ourselves here,” Harper said. “We’re used to this; at our first house (on Alfred Street), somebody got shot in the alley behind our house.”

On the lawn, a children’s swing set sat locked to the railing on the front step, next to a kid’s bike with training wheels.

During an average day, said Harper, at least a dozen people would briefly stop at the house in taxis or vehicles to go to the side door that led to the second-floor suite, before quickly leaving again. Even more people would stop by at night.

“All hours of the day, all hours of the night,” he said, adding he thought there was drug dealing occurring. “We kind of knew something like that was going to happen, sooner or later.”

Police spokesman Const. Claude Chancy said he had no further information he could provide on the investigation.

He said the three men arrested are all still in custody, but he did not yet know whether they had been charged and, if so, the offences.

Police have asked for anyone with video or information that could help detectives to call 204-986-6508 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 204-786-8477.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca