Two Food Fare employees hurt in attack back at work, third recovering, owner says

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This article was published 17/05/2024 (479 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Three Food Fare employees assaulted on the job are out of hospital, as police continue to search for suspects in the attack at the West End store, the site of several high-profile, violent incidents involving staff.

Co-owner Munther Zeid told the Free Press Friday that the employees, who were punched by an individual wielding brass knuckles at the Portage Avenue and Burnell Street Food Fare Tuesday, were on the mend.

“They’re recovering well,” he said. “A couple are back to work (and) one should be back next week. We gave him a little bit of extra time off. They’re doing well.”

A 17-year-old was arrested and charged with assault and weapons possession Tuesday. At the time, police said additional arrests were anticipated.

As of Friday, no further arrests have been made, a Winnipeg Police Service spokesperson confirmed.

On Tuesday night, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs announced it would hold a news conference with co-owners Munther and Tarik Zeid, along with family member Wajih Zeid, Wednesday morning to discuss the incident, but it was cancelled without explanation about two hours before it was scheduled to begin.

On Friday, Zeid said it had not been cancelled, only postponed, to allow all parties involved to get more information on the incident.

“It was decided that we should wait until all the facts come out, find out more information, and then make a statement, another press conference or not,” he said. “This time, it was basically it was postponed to allow everyone time to have proper discussions, get the facts and move forward in a positive way.”

On April 28, security camera footage of an altercation between a supervisor of the store and an Indigenous woman resulted in the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs announcing it would cut ties with the grocer, but suggested a reconciliation could happen if management issued an apology.

Security video viewed by a Free Press reporter showed an employee pulling on the woman’s bag. The woman appeared to swing her fist at the employee before the staff member appeared to punch her in the face.

In the Tuesday news conference advisory, the AMC said it was “working closely with the owners of Food Fare, who have expressed their sincere apologies for a previous incident where a woman was injured by security at their store,” and said ownership had promised to put together a policy to address shoplifting and implement cultural sensitivity training for staff.

AMC provides food and food vouchers to clients through federal government programming.

Zeid said conversations with AMC are ongoing and suggested the public was not getting the full story of the April 28 incident via news or social media, but did not elaborate further.

“It’s not fair to point fingers, and because the facts weren’t given out properly the first time, or a couple of weeks ago. It’s sort of led to ongoing issues,” he said.

“But again, once everybody knows the true story of everything, I think everything will work itself out.”

The West End Food Fare has been the site of several incidents and allegations related to shoplifting. In 2022, Zeid told the Free Press a person stealing meat pointed a gun at two of his staff.

In media interviews in 2019, Zeid said he placed baseball bats strategically around the store for employees to use if they were notified of a theft in progress.

Zeid said Friday he had no plans to add additional security to his stores and would focus on his work as a grocer.

“I’m not a social worker, I’m not a psychiatrist, to be able to answer those questions of why people do what they do, or how they think. I’m a grocer — meat and potatoes. that’s what I’m programmed to do, meat and potatoes, that’s what I’m good at,” he said.

“And I’m not going to allow anybody to disrupt my business and hurt my staff, my customers, my family, my neighbourhood. I will not allow it.”

Some local grocers say they’ve boosted security to mitigate thefts.

At Dino’s Grocery Mart, manager Rajan Varma said hiring a security guard in December was a pricey investment, but thefts have dropped approximately 75 per cent since.

Before December, there was at least one shoplifting attempt every day, he said.

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“We had to hire a security guard because police can not keep up,” he said.

Elizabeth Ogidam has owned Akin’s International Foods on Sargent for 20 years. She said she doesn’t see a point in investing in a security guard, and police rarely show up when called to her store.

“It doesn’t matter. I put cameras behind, in front, outside, so you prepare yourself when they come in,” she said. “I (found) my camera outside 10 times already, (thieves will) take it and throw it in the garbage.”

Ogidam said she focuses on protecting herself from violence in shoplifting situations but declined to provide details.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.

Every piece of reporting Malak produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.