Bus video shows man threatening to stab passenger, driver before exiting, fatally attacking Ukrainian refugee on the street

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This article was published 27/01/2026 (243 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Security video of a man on a Winnipeg Transit bus threatening to stab a passenger and the driver, who told him to leave, was taken just moments before a Ukrainian refugee suffered a fatal knife attack on the street, a murder trial was told Tuesday.

Winnipeg Police Service homicide investigator Timothy Dunphy told Court of King’s Bench Justice Ken Champagne that the bus video showed a man whose face was covered, wearing distinctive clothing, saying something like, “stab you, boy” to a passenger at the back of the bus.

Then, as he made his way to the front of the bus, he said, “You wanna get stabbed up, f—k?” to the driver, who ordered him off, before he made another reference to stabbing.

The man in the footage shown in court Tuesday is alleged to be Ethan Richard William Gladu, 21, who pleaded not guilty when his second-degree murder trial opened Monday. He is accused of fatally stabbing Ivan Rubanik, who was walking to work shortly before 8 a.m., on Dec. 20, 2023.

Rubanik, 46, was a father of two who had fled the Russian invasion of Ukraine and moved to Winnipeg with his family eight months before the random attack.

Dunphy, one of several WPS officers who testified Tuesday, said the man on the tape had his right hand in his pocket and held it in a manner that suggested he may have been armed.

The man got off the bus at about 7:47 a.m. at the corner of Talbot and Watt and walked toward Rubanik, who was across the street.

Footage from two cameras on a Talbot Avenue home captured the man from the bus walking up to Rubanik on the corner, then the two crossing the street, where the altercation and the stabbing are thought to have taken place.

Rubanik then ran to the other corner, where he collapsed, while the man from the bus was caught on tape running to a nearby apartment, where he was buzzed inside. A camera inside the building captured him entering, holding what investigators say was a knife.

Other cameras inside the building showed the man’s face, with a different pair of shoes on his feet. Investigators say he spoke with several residents inside the building.

Crown prosecutors Lee Turner and Patrick Benjamin called two other homicide unit investigators, who had showed residents of the Talbot Avenue apartment complex photo lineups later on the day of the slaying that contained a mugshot.

The trial is scheduled to continue this week and next.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca