Dramatic arrest on Red River followed fatal stabbing, trial told

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This article was published 23/01/2019 (2165 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On an unseasonably warm February night that left river conditions “extremely treacherous,” police in pursuit of a man suspected of stabbing a Winnipeg bus driver feared they might fall through the ice.

A canine unit had caught up to the suspect, three-quarters of the way across the Red River near the University of Manitoba’s Fort Garry campus, when more officers moved in to make the arrest.

After plowing through deep snow, thick brush, and taking a two-metre plunge down the river bank to the ice, things got worse, Const. David Crane recalled Thursday in a Winnipeg courtroom.

Brian Kyle Thomas, 24, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the Feb. 14, 2017, death of on-duty Transit driver Irvine Jubal Fraser, 58.

Crane said he and his Winnipeg Police Service partner arrived at the scene at 2:03 a.m.

“As we make our way onto the ice, we realize the ice is not safe,” Crane said.

“My boots immediately filled with water,” said the constable, who was carrying a shotgun at the time. “It was extremely treacherous.”

Parts were slippery, others were slushy, he said. “I don’t know if it’s two feet thick or one foot thick… I’m a big guy.”

When he neared the suspect, who was lying on his back, Crane said he told him if he reached for a knife, he could be shot. Crane told him to roll over onto his stomach and he was under arrest for assault with a weapon.

After he was handcuffed, the suspect — later identified as Thomas — stopped co-operating, said Crane. Officers on either side of him had to carry him, because he wouldn’t walk, he said. “The officers were carrying his entire body weight.”

At one point, they all slipped and fell struggling to get off the river ice quickly, he told the jury.

“He had to be dragged on the ice,” said WPS Const. John Solarczyk, who arrived at the scene after Crane and helped escort Thomas.

“The ice was cracking. You could hear it heaving. It buckled… We didn’t know how thick it was,” Solarczyk told court. “There were pools of water.”

Back on land, they had lift and drag the suspect up and over the steep river bank and through dense bush.

“Several times we had to let go of him to catch our breath,” said Solarczyk, who took a “soaking, completely wet” suspect to the police station. Thomas was given a paper jumpsuit to wear, and his clothing and property were seized.

Under cross-examination by defence lawyer Evan Roitenberg, Solarczyk said no knife-holder was found on Thomas.

When asked, the officer said he noted in the prisoner log Thomas was “intoxicated.”

Jurors watched a police video of Thomas at the police station, slurring his words, wanting to lie down, asking for a blanket and moaning. Solarczyk later took him to Misericordia Health Centre, where he was treated and released into police custody.

Thomas required three stitches on his right ear and suffered a sore leg and a scraped cheek and chest, jurors heard in an agreed statement of facts read to them Thursday.

Blood found by police on the trail Thomas took trying to cross the frozen Red belonged to the victim. The knife police found on the river bank in April 2017 was also mentioned. “There was no DNA evidence linking the knife to either Thomas or Fraser,” the statement said.

The defence has questioned witnesses about how drunk Thomas appeared, and how aggressive Fraser appeared.

On Thursday, a University of Manitoba student told the jury he saw Fraser kick the legs out from under Thomas in an attempt “to get him under control.”

Ridwan Hazeez, who had come to Canada to study just a month earlier from Nigeria, was visiting a friend at a residence at University College and on his way back to his U of M dorm on the other side of campus when he saw a bus driver “struggling” with a passenger.

“I saw the driver trying to push the passenger — the passenger wanted to come onto the bus. The driver didn’t want him to… When the passenger spit on the bus driver, he came out of the bus and they started fighting,” said the economics student, 19.

Under cross-examination by Roitenberg, Hazeez agreed, in a statement given to police nine days after the incident, he said Thomas appeared intoxicated and the driver was beating up the passenger on the ground.

“I don’t believe he was trying to harm him,” Hazeez told the jury Thursday. ” All I can recall is him trying to get him under control.”

The trial resumes Monday.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca