Two charged in unrelated city slayings

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This article was published 07/04/2025 (542 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two men have been charged in unrelated weekend homicides, including one that was discovered after a man turned up at police headquarters.

The man went to the downtown building on Smith Street at about 8:40 a.m. Sunday to turn himself in regarding an unrelated warrant for arrest.

“During the intake process, new information emerged that prompted an investigation at a hotel in the 300 block of Ellice Avenue,” the Winnipeg Police Service said in a news release Monday.

Officers found a slain woman in a hotel room and identified her as 34-year-old Tara Walker, a Chemawawin Cree First Nation member.

Homicide unit investigators determined the pair knew each other and that an altercation happened in the room. The release did not say how the two knew each other but noted the WPS is committed to “providing support to survivors of intimate partner violence.”

That would make Walker the second woman slain in a known domestic incident in Winnipeg this year, a Free Press data analysis showed.

Andrew James Sinclair, 31, has been charged with second-degree murder. He lives in Easterville, a tiny community adjacent to Chemawawin.

Sinclair was convicted of sexual assault in 2016 and was sentenced to 42 months in custody. He was convicted in 2021 of assault and obstruction of justice and was sentenced to the equivalent of about 21.5 months.

The WPS asked anyone with information about the hotel slaying to contact the homicide unit at 204-986-6508, or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 204-786-8477 (TIPS) or online.

Officers found another homicide victim in an unrelated slaying that same morning. City police were called about a non-responsive man who appeared to have been assaulted in a home on the 700 block Pacific Avenue at about 6:15 a.m.

He was dead when officers arrived. Investigators identified him as 32-year-old Kelsey Traverse, a Lake St. Martin First Nation member living in Winnipeg.

Police arrested a man at a home on the 100 block of Kate Street.

The Winnipeg Police Service’s homicide unit determined the victim and the man arrested knew each other and became involved in an altercation at the home.

Michael George Lavallee, 33, of Winnipeg, has been charged with second-degree murder in the Pacific Avenue homicide and was detained in custody.

Lavallee was sentenced in 2022 for two counts of assault and one count of robbery with a weapon. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail.

Winnipeg has recorded 11 homicides this year. Seven of the victims were male.

— with files from Dean Pritchard and Erik Pindera

fpcity@freepress.mb.ca