Two dead in apparent shooting rampage, public warned

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This article was published 23/10/2010 (5080 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG — Two people were killed and one was in critical condition in an apparent rash of random shootings at homes in the North End Saturday night.

Police spokesman Const. Jason Michalyshen warned citizens late Saturday not to open their doors to unexpected visitors and not to investigate if they hear something suspicious.

“It seems to be random shootings in the North End,” Michalyshen said in a media briefing late Saturday.

“We don’t know where this individual is at this point,” he added.

Michalyshen wouldn’t verify if the suspect is on bike or on foot. He said it is not known if the injuries were sustained in or out of homes.

“This is a very serious incident. It is unique and very unfortunate.”

In quick succession just minutes apart, shots were fired at a suite on Stella Walk in the Lord Selkirk Park housing development at 8:35 p.m., a house on Dufferin Avenue at 8:45 p.m. and in the 400 block of Boyd Avenue shortly after 9 p.m.

At press time, police were chasing a bicyclist believed to be armed with a sawed-off shotgun on one of the city’s bicycle paths near Burrows Avenue running along the Red River.

A man on Dufferin Avenue was rushed to hospital in critical condition with wounds to his upper body.

Yellow police tape roped off all three crime scenes.

At Stella Walk, a resident said he went to buy a Slurpee when “I saw somebody on a bike looking like a ninja and I thought it was suspicious, but I didn’t think anything more about it.

“I thought afterwards, ‘Was he carrying a gun?’

“Then two or three minutes later I heard the shots… I heard three or four shots and I heard a girl screaming.”

Nearby, investigating police officers holding flashlights scoured the front exterior of one of the suites for evidence of the shooting there.

One officer pointed out to other officers a large hole blasted through one of the suite’s front windows.

Just about three blocks west of this shooting, a small grey kitten was nosing around the grass under yellow police tape outside a one-and-a-half-storey house at 495 Dufferin Ave., where the second shooting occurred.

There were no visible signs of the shooting there, but officers were guarding the scene.

A few blocks north on Boyd, police taped blocked both ends of the 400 block and the back lane between Boyd and Powers Street.

Police officers could be seen in the distance talking to residents at their front doors.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca