Man stabbed defending bus passenger describes harrowing scene

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This article was published 04/11/2018 (2146 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When two members of the Bear Clan Patrol saw the glint of a blade flashed on a bus Sunday morning, they felt something had to be done, before someone ended up injured, or worse.

Adrenaline kicked in, and they acted.

It wasn’t until after a physical battle with the knife-wielding man that Matthew Shorting and Jonathan Meikle realized how much danger they had been in. Blood was leaking from a stab wound in the back of Meikle’s thigh, requiring eight stitches to close.

“I consider my injury small relative to what could have happened,” Meikle, 29, said Monday.

The two friends were on a bus in the downtown Winnipeg area just after midnight Sunday, when another man got on, sat near them and began talking about his gang affiliation. Not long after, the man reportedly pulled out a knife and began hurling racial epithets at a black passenger, threatening to stab him in the neck.

When the threatened passenger got up and headed for the front of the bus, the suspect followed. Shorting and Meikle got up to intervene.

They said they feared the suspect was about to stab the other passenger, so Meikle yelled to get his attention. The suspect instead allegedly advanced on the two friends, but Meikle — a military veteran — levelled him with a kick.

The two men dragged the suspect off the bus and battled to get the knife away from him on the sidewalk. During their scuffle, Meikle said he felt his leg nicked by the knife, but it wasn’t until later after police arrived that he realized how deep the gash was.

“There was just so much adrenaline, but when the adrenaline went down, I realized how much of a threat the situation had been,” Shorting, 28, said.

Police said roughly 10 minutes before he boarded the bus, the male suspect allegedly robbed a man of his cellphone and wallet while holding the knife to the victim’s throat.

Meikle and Shorting said they have no ill will towards the accused.

“It’s a symptom of deeper problems. How does a person come to be violent and have so much hatred? There’s poverty, addiction and there’s a history, as well, of how intergenerational trauma has come into our homes. He’s going to be thrown in jail and punished, and not helped to heal what is driving his actions,” Shorting said.

Those comments were echoed by Meikle, who said society has to address the underlying issues that spark such violent episodes if it wants to make progress on crime.

“We should be looking at our systems that are in place and putting those under the microscope,” he said.

“We were very fortunate that we were able to stop it this time, but there are so many times where there is no one available to stop it and things go a lot worse than they did that night.”

Devon Evan Charles Henderson, 23, of Winnipeg, has been charged with a number of offences, including robbery, uttering threats, assault with a weapon and possession of a weapon. He was also processed on an outstanding parole warrant and has been detained in custody.

ryan.thorpe@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @rk_thorpe