Accused killer pleads not guilty in 2023 stabbing death of Ukrainian refugee

The man accused in a random attack that took the life of a Ukrainian refugee during the morning rush hour more than two years ago pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in a Winnipeg courtroom Monday.

Ivan Rubanik, a 46-year-old Ukrainian refugee and father of two, was on the way to work at the time. Police described the attack as unprovoked and senseless, with no apparent motive.

Ethan Richard William Gladu, now 21, is charged in the fatal stabbing at Watt Street and Talbot Avenue on Dec. 20, 2023. Gladu, dressed in a wrinkled white button-up shirt, entered his plea in front of Court of King’s Bench Justice Ken Champagne.

Gladu was arrested about three hours after the attack on the 100 block of Henry Avenue in South Point Douglas. He was on bail for unrelated offences at the time.

Crown prosecutor Lee Turner told court that the Crown’s case is, at first, focused on proving Gladu’s identity as the killer via video surveillance, photographs and witnesses.

If Gladu is proven to have been the man who stabbed Rubanik, prosecutors will then argue that he should be convicted of second-degree murder as charged, rather than the lesser charge of manslaughter, Turner said.

Crown prosecutor Patrick Benjamin then called Emily Dyck, a 39-year-old provincial government employee, to testify as the first witness.

“He said, ‘There’s a lot of blood, you don’t want to see this.’”

Dyck was driving with her young son on Watt Street at about 7:50 a.m., and stopped at the intersection with Talbot Avenue, she told court.

She saw a man standing on the Watt Street side of the intersection, grasping his chest before dropping to his knees and folding forward with his head down.

She quickly parked in a nearby lot and called 911, she said. Another passerby soon stopped beside her and, after the Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service arrived, the two of them walked over to the victim. The second passerby advised her not to come any closer.

“He said, ‘There’s a lot of blood, you don’t want to see this,’” said Dyck.

Dyck said she saw an Indigenous male who looked like a youth, wearing a backpack, walking north toward the scene before she left to take her son to daycare.

Turner then called Winnipeg Police Service Const. Remi Van Den Driessche to testify.

“They were working on him hard, they were doing chest compressions like crazy.”

Van Den Driessche and his partner were the first officers called to the scene by emergency medical responders, who advised there had been a possible stabbing. They arrived at about 8:11 a.m.

Van Den Driessche told court that when he saw the blood at the scene, he called for more officers to assist, as his partner began to tape off the area. Van Den Driessche then went to speak with paramedics and firefighters as they worked on Rubanik in the back of an ambulance.

“They were working on him hard, they were doing chest compressions like crazy,” he said.

Van Den Driessche accompanied Rubanik — then in unstable condition — in the ambulance to Health Sciences Centre, where he was pronounced dead at 8:54 a.m.

Prosecutors then called Sgt. James Sushnyk, who was the patrol sergeant supervising district patrol officers in the area the day of the killing, to testify.

Sushnyk said the first piece of video evidence seized was from a home on nearby Talbot Avenue, which showed a man running down the street at about 7:53 a.m.

The colour of that man’s jacket did not match up with the colour of the jacket of the man seen on other surveillance tape, Gladu’s lawyer, Tara Walker, noted while cross-examining the officer.

Sushnyk responded that he had advised other officers of the clothing discrepancy and that investigators determined the man seen running down Talbot was unrelated to the case.

Sushnyk also said officers had determined a nearby address on Talbot Avenue as a place where their suspect — by then identified as Gladu — may have gone after the killing, though how they came to that conclusion was unclear Monday.

Officer Chad Black, whose rank was not made clear in court, also testified Monday.

Black, who had been tasked with finding potential video surveillance from nearby homes, had little luck. He decided to call Winnipeg Transit, which later provided video from two buses that had driven through the area.

A man, who police believe was Gladu, was seen on tape on the two buses.

On the first bus, headed east on Talbot Avenue, the man threatened the driver as he told her to stop, saying something to the effect of “You want to get stabbed now, f—-? I’ll stab you,” said Black. The man got off and boarded the second bus headed west on Talbot.

That man then got off the second bus at the corner of Watt Street and Talbot Avenue at 7:47 a.m. and could be seen on transit surveillance walking across Watt toward a man wearing dark clothing at the corner, Black told court.

Sushnyk said police compared images from the surveillance with a police photo of Gladu and determined it was the same person.

Rubanik, his wife and two children had moved to Winnipeg about eight months prior to his death, fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022, people who knew the family said at the time.

His widow, accompanied by an interpreter, watched the court proceedings from the public gallery Monday morning.

The trial continues this week.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca