Neighbours had affection for victim

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This article was published 20/05/2015 (3922 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE woman known to neighbours only as “Dorothy” was fondly remembered as a feisty, no-nonsense person.

Dorothy Dykens, 89, was found stabbed to death in her tiny, single-storey home in the 400 block of Tremblay Street in St. Boniface early Sunday, police said.

Melissa Joyce Gabriel, 35, is charged with manslaughter.

Dorothy loved animals, especially dogs, worked until she was pensioned off in St. Boniface’s meat-packing industry, and carried herself with a straightforward manner and style, neighbours said.

They remembered her with affection.

Dorothy never married, never had children and didn’t have much use for men as romantic partners, her neighbours said.

She’d lived in the cosy home for decades, perhaps as long as 30 years, according to one couple who have lived a couple of doors down for even longer.

Neighbours described her as tall and thin with white hair.

“If she didn’t like you, she’d tell you,” one neighbour said.

“I can tell you a story,” said one elderly man, who lives a couple of doors down from the victim’s home. He didn’t want to give his name and neither did his wife, but both said Dorothy made them feel like she watched over them.

The man said he survived a heart attack about a decade ago, the same summer he hired roofers to re-shingle his roof. One day, he made the mistake of climbing a ladder to check out the project.

He didn’t get very far, he recalled, before Dorothy’s voice came sailing over from her yard.

“I heard her raspy voice: ‘You get down from there right now,’ she told me. I did,” he said. “She was super.”

“She was feisty,” his wife added.

Monday to Friday would usually find Dorothy at Johnny’s Marion Restaurant, across from the Marion Hotel on Marion Street.

“She came here a lot,” said Johnny’s manager Philip Andromidas. “For years and years… I was pretty shocked myself. You see someone every day for years and all of a sudden, you don’t see her.”

Her order never varied: a grilled chicken breast, a little rice and some salad and a scoop of vanilla ice cream for dessert.

“She reminded me of what Hillary Clinton talked about, about tough love? That’s the way she was, the way it seemed she was brought up,” Andromidas said. “Things were black or white to her. There was no nonsense about her.”

Dorothy wore men’s clothes long before pants were standard for women. “Shirt, pants. I never seen her without her jeans on and a shirt and runners,” neighbour Helen Gregorchuk said.

“She was a war veteran. Do you think they’ll help bury her? She never married. She had no kids,” Gregorchuk said.

Gregorchuk and her husband, Bill, were recovering from their own brush with the woman charged in Dorothy’s death the night of the tragedy.

The elderly couple was awakened by banging on the door about 3 a.m. and a woman’s voice yelling at them, “Open the f door.”

Gregorchuk said she refused and warned the woman she would call the police. The woman kept banging and yelling.

“I phoned the cops. I said there’s a lady banging on the door and acting crazy,” she said.

“They came right away, five cruisers,” Bill Gregorchuk said.

By the time they did, the woman had returned to the house where she was staying and allegedly stabbed at least one of the two dogs, pets of the owner who was away on holiday.

Pamela Bosko said she walks her dog on Tremblay Street every day and Dorothy was a friendly face.

“I want people to know she will be missed. That even if she’s no longer here, she’s remembered.”

Bosko plans to put flowers at Dorothy’s home this week.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca