Man stabbed during random attack in St. James parking lot

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This article was published 23/11/2019 (2150 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A man is recovering in hospital after being stabbed multiple times in what police are calling a random and “senseless” attack outside a St. James gym on Friday night.

Authorities responded to a report of an assault in a parking lot on the 2300 block of Ness Avenue near the intersection of Moray Street and Ness Avenue at 8:15 p.m.

A dispute between the two men, who were unknown to each other, escalated to the point where the victim was stabbed multiple times, Winnipeg police Const. Rob Carver told the Free Press.

“It must be terrifying to think you’re having an aggressive person come up to you and moving and screaming at you for no reason and suddenly, repeatedly stabbing you for no reason,” he said.

The victim was taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries. He has since been upgraded to stable.

Hours after the incident, splatters of blood still stained the parking lot’s grey pavement.

An employee at Anytime Fitness in the mall at Moray Street and Ness Avenue said he wasn’t allowed to provide details about the incident to a reporter.

Employees at neighbouring businesses said there was a heavy police presence in the area Friday night, which forced them to exit out the back of their stores, although they were unaware of the event that had played out.

There is no known reason for the attack or any indication the suspect was on methamphetamines at the time, Carver said.

“I wish there was, it would be part of that explanation we’re searching for,” Carver said, adding it’s harmful to try to make sense of incidents like these because there’s a risk of normalizing them.

The incident caps off another week of extreme violence in Winnipeg.

On Thursday evening, a Winnipeg police officer fired nine gunshots and critically injured an armed 16-year-old male outside a West End convenience store. The youth’s lawyer did not have any update on his status Saturday.

One day earlier, a 15-year-old attacked three Liquor Mart employees in a rampage in Tyndall Park. One female employee was knocked unconscious after she was punched in the face, but was later upgraded to stable.

“We’re seeing levels of the violence in this city that are disturbing to even long-time cops,” Carver said Saturday.

He added that as a professional trained in personal safety and risk analysis, he is at a loss for ways to tell people how to protect themselves when there’s no way to assess what is a threat and what isn’t, as was the case in the St. James parking lot on Friday.

Gregg Stanley Dodge, 39, has been arrested in connection to the St. James incident and charged with one count of aggravated assault and two counts of failure to comply with a recognizance.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie