Winnipeg police fatally shoot man after chase outside city; RCMP arrest other suspect hours later in Saskatchewan By: Chris Kitching and Tyler Searle Posted: 8:24 AM CDT Wednesday, Jun. 5, 2024 Last Modified: 6:53 PM CDT Wednesday, Jun. 5, 2024 Updates

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/06/2024 (848 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTERBURNE — A suspect died after being shot by Winnipeg police outside a southern Manitoba university early Wednesday, while a second man was arrested in Saskatchewan hours later after a manhunt across two provinces.

RCMP arrested David Frank Burling, 29 — who has a history of thefts and leading police on pursuits — and a woman near Springside, Sask., some 500 kilometres from Otterburne, where the shooting happened.

The name of the man who was fatally shot was not released. The Winnipeg Police Service said officers opened fire when a stolen pickup truck, which was being tracked by the WPS helicopter, rammed into their marked SUV.

“All I can say is we react to the actions of people,” WPS acting chief Art Stannard told a news conference. “Police members take their oath very seriously, and to protect and serve the citizens of Winnipeg. They don’t want to kill anybody, and they don’t want to shoot anybody. They want all the incidents to be handled and resolved without any use of force. They wear this, too. We worry about their wellness, as well.”

He said the suspects were known to police.

The shooting happened in a parking lot at Providence University College and Theological Seminary, about 50 kilometres south of Winnipeg.

Police refused to confirm whether the shots were fired while officers were seated inside their cruiser. A police SUV was later parked on the shoulder of Highway 59, northeast of Otterburne, with 14 bullet holes in its front windshield.

The WPS became involved at about 12:30 a.m., when it was notified by RCMP that a black Ford F-350 pickup, stolen from a rural municipality southwest of Winnipeg, was headed toward the city, said spokesman Const. Claude Chancy.

Several people were inside the vehicle and potentially armed, police were told, adding the suspects had been linked to two police pursuits outside Winnipeg.

About 10 minutes later, city police saw the stolen truck in St. James, near Ness Avenue and Linwood Street. Officers pursued the vehicle for about an hour.

Stannard said to his knowledge, the WPS did not know the suspects’ identities when city officers became involved.

The WPS helicopter, which Stannard said had to land to refuel before rejoining the pursuit, eventually guided officers to the university parking lot in Otterburne.

Additional police vehicles were responding to the area when the police-involved shooting happened, he said.

The driver of the truck then fled to a Shell gas station parking lot on Drovers Run in Niverville, about 15 kilometres north of Otterburne.

Police said the driver got into another vehicle and drove off at about 3 a.m. A woman tried to run away from the truck, but was arrested.

City police found a man in the truck suffering from a gunshot wound. He died of his injuries, despite medical care provided by police and paramedics.

The Independent Investigation Unit of Manitoba is investigating the shooting. It is asking witnesses or anyone with video to call 1-844-667-6060.

Stannard said the WPS could comment only on its involvement, and could not provide more details about the shooting. He deferred some questions to the RCMP, which did not hold a news conference.

Shortly after 10 a.m., Saskatchewan RCMP said officers were looking for Burling in the Esterhazy area, about 40 kilometres west of the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border.

He was believed to be in a Subaru CrossTrek SUV with a Manitoba licence plate. People were warned not to pick up hitchhikers and to keep their homes and vehicles locked.

RCMP said Burling and a woman were arrested at about 1:30 p.m. near Springside, northwest of Yorkton. They were in a silver vehicle at the time, said police, who were looking for the Subaru.

When the manhunt for Burling was launched, police had only a vague description of a vehicle and no identifiers on a possible suspect, said Manitoba RCMP spokeswoman Tara Seel.

She said police waited to notify the public until they had “concrete” information.

“We could not alert the public to information we did not have or could not confirm at the time,” she wrote in an email. “Please be assured that many discussions were had about how to alert the public, but ultimately, we did not have solid information to provide. We could not alert the public to watch for anything or anyone in particular. We came out as soon as we could to make the public aware of the situation and that the suspect had fled.”

At the scene in Niverville, the body of a man lay on the pavement covered by a white tarp near the passenger side of the pickup. The truck, covered in a yellow tarp, was parked near gas pumps, surrounded by shattered glass and discarded latex gloves within a police cordon.

Residents living on Dochart Gate, just south of the gas station, said they woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a woman screaming.

“We were sound asleep, so we didn’t see anything before we heard a woman calling out and crying,” neighbour Kate Cardinal said. “She was very distressed, like, crying hysterically, and she just kept saying, ‘I was so scared, I was so scared,’ and, ‘I’m so sorry.’”

Cardinal said she and her husband watched from the rear window of their home as police tried to calm the woman in the gas station parking lot before taking her away.

“This is very unusual for Niverville,” she said.

Another neighbour, David Polanski, said he was also woken by a screaming woman.

He poked his head out the front door of his home and saw a police officer running with a gun in his hand.

“I thought, ‘Holy s—t,’” he said. “I just closed my doors, I figured they were taking a precautionary measure. Originally, there was just one cruiser, and then a bunch more came.”

In Otterburne, a southern section of the Providence campus was cordoned off with police tape. Plainclothes detectives surveyed the scene, pointing towards a pair of tire treads that marked the path where a vehicle left the roadway and drove over the university lawn.

Providence provost Nicholas Greco said some university staff who live on site were woken in the middle of the night by a disturbance.

He noted few students are on campus because the school’s semester recently ended.

Rural Municipality of De Salaberry Coun. Diana Cline, who lives in Otterburne, said the community was in shock.

“Our cute little quiet town doesn’t see this kind of action. It doesn’t see this kind of presence of local authorities,” she said. “It’s definitely not something we see or have had happen here.”

Niverville Mayor Myron Dyck spent the day checking for updates from the RCMP.

“Our message at this point is to say we’re thankful for the RCMP and the service to our community,” he said. “They have a tough job to do, and they do it well.

“My heart is such that I think of all involved individuals, whether they’re on the RCMP side or whether they were the other individuals.”

Three schools in Niverville were in hold-and-secure protocol, in which all exterior doors were locked, out of “an abundance of caution” Wednesday morning. The protocol was later lifted.

In June 2022, Burling was shot by an RCMP officer during an incident on the Trans-Canada Highway east of Portage la Prairie. In court earlier this year, he denied ramming the officer’s vehicle and swerving at him.

— with files from Erik Pindera

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca