Man pleads guilty to manslaughter in slaying, burning of victim he thought was sex criminal

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This article was published 27/11/2024 (695 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg man whose charred remains were found in a Point Douglas parking lot last year was fatally attacked hours earlier by a man who thought he was a sex offender, a court has heard.

Tyrus Mann, 24, pleaded guilty Tuesday to manslaughter in the April 26, 2023 slaying of 45-year-old Ryan Cory Monias.

Mann will be sentenced in January, at which time court will be provided a medical report detailing his lengthy psychiatric history and cognitive deficits.

Crown attorney Boyd McGill and defence lawyer Amanda Sansregret told King’s Bench Justice Rick Saull they will be jointly recommending a sentence, but did not disclose its duration.

Mann and Monias were at the Manwin Hotel on Main Street when Mann, believing Monias was a “skinner” (street slang for a sex offender), assaulted and “incapacitated” Monias, McGill told court, reading from an agreed statement of facts.

Mann strapped Monias’s body inside a sleeping bag, then placed it in a laundry bin, covered it with scavenged debris, and wheeled the bin to the area of Our Relatives Place homeless shelter on Disraeli Freeway around 7:30 p.m.

Mann “loitered in that area for several hours without relinquishing possession of the deceased’s body,” McGill said.

Shortly after midnight, Mann wheeled the laundry bin to a warehouse parking lot on Gomez Street where he set it on fire.

Mann fled the area. A passerby came upon the fire a short time later and called 911.

A witness at the time said the victim’s body was so charred it was unrecognizable as human remains.

Police arrested Mann days later in connection to an unrelated stabbing the same day Monias was killed and recovered a knife later found to have blood on it matching Monias’s DNA.

Mann, who was not yet a suspect in Monias’s killing, was released on an undertaking and then rearrested May 2 “on another unrelated matter,” McGill said. A day later, police connected Mann to Monias’s death and arrested him for committing an indignity on human remains.

Mann “voluntarily” confessed and told police he became angry with Monias, thinking he was a sex offender, and “snapped” his neck before “fold(ing) him like a pretzel” and placing his body in a sleeping bag, McGill said.

An autopsy showed no evidence of smoke in Monias’s lungs, suggesting he was already dead when Mann set fire to his body. While no cause of death was determined, injuries to Monias’s body were consistent with Mann’s statement to police, McGill said.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca