Man charged after girls sexually, physically assaulted and held in Exchange District hotel room

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A 54-year-old man, already subject to a long-term supervision order stemming from the 2009 robbery of an elderly victim, is accused of confining two teenage girls in a Winnipeg hotel room to sexually and physically assault them.

A girl seeking help called the Winnipeg Police Service at about 8:30 a.m. Saturday.

She told officers she’d escaped from an Exchange District hotel where a man had sexually assaulted her and her friend, who was still in the suite, police said Tuesday.

A suspect jumped from a second-storey window and tried to flee when police arrived, but officers caught him.

He and the teen girls were transported to hospital in stable condition.

Sex crimes investigators determined a man had approached the two girls, who are in their mid-teens, and a woman they’re friends with outside on the 800 block of Main Street Friday evening.

All four people went to the man’s hotel suite in the Exchange District, where the man allegedly gave the woman and girls alcohol and drugs, police said.

The girls and their friend then left, but the man approached the two girls on the same block of Main again at about 7 a.m. Saturday and lured them back to the hotel.

The man, police allege, gave them more alcohol and drugs, before he prevented them from leaving the suite while sexually and physically assaulting them.

WPS spokeswoman Const. Dani McKinnon said offers of drugs, alcohol, a place to stay or a ride somewhere are often used “as the backbone of these type of offences.”

“This is a serious, violating incident,” McKinnon said, declining to provide further details. “Very forceful, very serious.”

Kelly Trent Schoffer, 54, has been charged with two counts each of sexual assault, forcible confinement and failing to comply with a probation order, and single counts of assault, obtaining sexual services for consideration and possession of cocaine.

Schoffer, who was detained in custody, was on parole for a conviction for breaching the conditions of a long-term supervision order.

He was initially placed on a five-year supervision order in 2011 in Saskatchewan’s Court of King’s Bench after pleading guilty to robbery for breaking into the Moose Jaw home of a 79-year-old woman in 2009. He was sentenced to two years behind bars, before the supervision order was to begin. It appears the order was extended due to breaches.

Under the Criminal Code, long-term supervision orders of up to 10 years can be made in cases where an offender has been sentenced to at least two years in prison and there is a substantial risk they will reoffend in the community

Schoffer knocked on the Moose Jaw victim’s door one afternoon in November 2009, claimed his truck broke down and asked to use the phone, according to his 2011 Saskatchewan sentencing decision.

He followed the victim inside, grabbing her by the hair and pushing her to the floor. He made off with $80 in cash and coins and left the victim on the floor with hair torn from her scalp.

The 2011 court decision indicates Schoffer had a lengthy history of convictions, including several physical and sexual assaults on his record. He had a crack cocaine addiction at the time.

“Mr. Schoffer’s record indicates a pattern of repetitive violent behaviour… (he) demonstrates ongoing problems in emotional regulation as he is quick to anger and has an extensive pattern of often impulsive and/or reactive violence — which is exacerbated by alcohol and drugs,” wrote Saskatchewan King’s Bench Justice E.J. Gunn in 2011, also noting Schoffer had a history of court order breaches.

Winnipeg and Manitoba RCMP asked for the public’s help in finding Schoffer in February 2017, after federal corrections officials obtained an arrest warrant for failing to comply with conditions of his long-term supervision order.

Schoffer was convicted in February 2022 of breaching conditions of his long-term supervision order and sentenced to the equivalent of 18 months in jail, court records show.

Last March, he was convicted a second time of breaching conditions of the order and received the same sentence, plus three years supervised probation.

— With files from Dean Pritchard

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca