Police investigate Magnus Avenue killing

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This article was published 09/04/2022 (1440 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The row house on the corner of Magnus Avenue and Andrews Street took a turn in recent months, after new tenants moved in. There were parties during the week, with people coming and going late at night — a lot of drinking and screaming and fighting that neighbour Danielle Kaye often heard from her bedroom window.

The 21-year-old university student wasn’t surprised when she came back to her grandmother’s house Friday evening to find the block taped off, with police cruisers lining the William Whyte street, after a man had been found dead inside the home.

The Winnipeg Police Service major crimes unit is now investigating the man’s death as a homicide — the 11th in the city this year.

Officers responded to the 500 block of Magnus Avenue at about 6:15 p.m. Friday for a report of an armed person, police said Saturday morning, though they did not specify what kind of weapon was involved.

They found a suspect outside the home and took him into custody, and soon found the victim inside. The victim’s name, age and manner of death have not yet been released, but he’s an adult male.

The accused, whose name has also not yet been released, remains in police custody. The WPS has not yet said what charges he might face.

“They were different — disruptive,” Kaye said of her neighbours on the corner, compared with the elderly men who had lived there prior. “People getting beat.”

There were at least three people in their 30s or 40s who lived in the residence Kaye described as something almost like a rooming house.

Officers from the police forensics unit clad in white jumpsuits, one carrying a camera, went in and out of the home on Saturday morning. A police cruiser was parked outside of the navy two-storey house with a broken front window. On the Andrews Street side of the house, someone had spray-painted “MOB” vertically in block capital letters, next to another tag that read “chilly”

Police cadets sat in their vehicle on the side street, next to the house’s small backyard, which was cordoned off with yellow police tape around to Magnus Avenue. A green hatchback sat parked with its back windshield smashed out, and an unmarked police van was on the adjacent boulevard.

Yellow evidence markers were placed on the front step, lawn and a garbage bin, near a broken chair on the lawn. Police in plain clothes in an unmarked vehicle drove by slowly.

Later, the police in white jumpsuits brought a gurney and a dark bag into the home on the corner.

Kaye’s grandmother, Shirley Flett, 69, said she saw about six police cruisers arrive Friday evening but wasn’t sure what had happened. Police had been parked on the block since.

Flett has lived on Magnus for 10 years and it’s normally a fine place to live, she said as she sat in the living room of her home, watching television Saturday. Most of her neighbours are families with children.

“Nobody’s ever bothered us,” Flett said. “I feel bad for (the victim).”

She normally doesn’t lock the door of her house. But she’s going to start now.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @erik_pindera