Rare act of violence shakes peaceful, devout city

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This article was published 28/08/2017 (3126 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINKLER — As news spread over this booming prairie city, even the air seemed to change, to grow thicker in the heat. Thousands of prayers rose up in thousands of hearts and were held there for a moment, and then released.

Prayers for hope, prayers for healing. Prayers for a family and community now reeling from a sudden outburst of violence, which struck in a place that most in Winkler see as a sanctuary, a place of peace, a familiar safe haven.

Underneath the prayers, a painful and unanswered question: why did this happen?

It was the kind of crime that shocks us to the core. A 15-year-old girl, stabbed on Sunday afternoon at the Pembina Valley Baptist Church; a 39-year-old Winkler man arrested. No motive that police could tell, no obvious connection.

The good news is, the teen is alive and she is healing. On Monday, she remained in stable condition in a Winnipeg hospital, where she was airlifted after the attack. Her family was at her side.

“She is handling this with great grace,” Pembina Valley pastor Michael Sullivant wrote in a statement on the church’s website. “She is a fine young lady.”

This is how the event unfolded.

Winkler police received the call at about 1 p.m., 30 minutes after the church’s morning worship service had ended. People still milled about the big tyndall stone and stucco building, chatting, affirming the bonds of their congregation.

Suddenly, the 15-year-old girl was stabbed in the women’s washroom. Two of the church members happened to be nurses; they rushed to give the girl first aid and stayed with her until an ambulance arrived.

When police reached the church, situated just four blocks from Winkler’s city hall, the victim was able to give them a description of her attacker. With churchgoers’ help, officers found the suspect in the parking lot. He was just sitting in a vehicle.

Why did this happen? That’s what police wanted to know, too. So far, they have not found an answer.

“The accused has not co-operated with us in any way, shape or form when it comes to offering any insight into his motive,” police Chief Rick Hiebert said. “Right now, it appears random, but we’re just speculating on that, too.”

Winkler Mayor Martin Harder learned the news that afternoon, when he got a call from the chair of the city’s police board. He listened to the report in disbelief: it’s not something he imagined would ever happen in the city.

Violence is uncommon here, though rates have inched upward as the city of 13,000 surges. Last year, there were a few stabbings in Winkler, Hiebert said, but investigators were usually able to identify a connection and a motive.

In 2016, the city recorded its third-ever homicide. A 25-year-old Saskatoon man was killed at a local bowling alley after getting into an argument over a bar tab. The accused was also from Saskatoon; the two were working in Winkler.

So violence, it does happen here. But neither the city’s police chief — who has served 34 years on the force — nor its mayor can remember anything like this.

“For somebody just to walk in after a church service is over and decide he’s going to stab somebody three times, it’s just unheard of,” Harder said. “As a community, there’s a sense of betrayal, because it’s not what we do here.”

That it happened in a church, Harder added, struck deeply at the city’s core. Winkler is a deeply faith-connected community; usually, the open doors of churches are a key part of their values, a light of welcoming.

“As a community, we’ve always felt the church is a safe haven,” Harder said. “Your home, your place of business, your church are generally safe havens… As a community, you feel this invasion that happened.”

More details trickled out Monday afternoon. Police named the accused as 39-year-old Winkler resident Maksym Kravchenko. He has been charged with aggravated assault and possessing a weapon for a dangerous purpose.

There are few digital traces of him online: a profile on an Eastern European dating and networking website, apparently abandoned. Not much else, not much to suggest where to investigate that open question of “why.”

Hiebert said police had dealt with the individual on one previous occasion, but it wasn’t a significant incident. The suspect did not know the victim. In its statement, the church said he was not a member of the congregation.

So the “why,” for now, remains unanswered, and in the long shadow of the question, the crime grows even more frightening. It’s the seeming randomness of violence like this that sensationalizes and grips the public’s attention.

If it happened there, our fears whisper, it can happen anywhere, to anyone.

Yet the seeming randomness of it also means it is unlikely to be repeated. There has never been another crime like this in Winkler that mayor or police chief can remember. It is quite possible there will be nothing like it ever again.

For one family, though, it happened. For one teen girl, it is all too real. And while police and public search for answers to a scary open question, they can also give thanks for this one grace: with time and faith, their neighbour can heal.

“Pray for all involved, as you can well imagine the trauma they are facing,” Pastor Sullivant wrote on the Pembina Valley Baptist Church’s website. “We thank God that even though we are surprised at these events, God is not.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca