Few city homicides involve minors

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This article was published 20/12/2023 (629 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Children and young people rarely fall victim to homicide in Winnipeg.

The youngest victim of the year to date is 14. She was allegedly stabbed by a 17-year-old boy on Graham Avenue near Fort Street Dec. 15. He has been charged with second-degree murder.

“Any homicide investigation, regardless of age, is difficult… but when you throw in the variable of a 14-year-old victim, we can say 14-year-old victim, a 14-year-old female — this was a 14-year-old girl. In my eyes, as a 50-something, she’s a child,” said Winnipeg Police Service spokesman Const. Jason Michalyshen.

“This is a young person that we have now lost in our community.”

Of the city’s 40 homicide victims this year, the teen is one of three minors.

On March 6, a 15-year-old boy was shot and killed on the 200 block of Amherst Street in St. James following an altercation with a group. His family identified him as Phoenix Thompson. A 17-year-old boy was later charged with manslaughter.

A 17-year-old boy, who was trying to protect family members from a group of youths outside a concert at the Canada Life Centre, was stabbed on June 17 and died in hospital days later. A 14-year-old was charged with second-degree murder.

In 2022, two minors were among the city’s 53 slayings.

The first was an infant girl who was found dead in a garbage bin behind Boyd Avenue on May 3.

Charges laid against her mother, including manslaughter, were stayed by Crown attorneys after a pathologist couldn’t determine the cause of death.

On Sept. 30 of that year, a 16-year-old boy was found dead outside a home on the 500 block of Balmoral Street in what police initially described as suspicious circumstances. Detectives identified him and deemed his death a slaying, but have not yet made any arrests.

In 2021, four of the 40 slayings involved minors, including two 17-year-old boys, a 12-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl.

The three-year-old, Jemimah Bundalian, was stabbed twice by her father and died in July 2021. Frank Nausigimana, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in 2022.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca