Listen to this article
Estimated 4 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
A man has been arrested after a window was smashed at a high school in Winnipeg’s River Heights area and similar vandalism was carried out Saturday morning at a number of nearby homes, including that of a local MLA.
Evan Moir said he woke up around 6:30 a.m. to a brick being thrown into a bay window at his house on Kingsway near Kelvin High School.
When he looked outside, “there seemed like a bit of a madman running around and doing the same to other neighbours, as you can see,” he said later Saturday, gesturing down his street at a number of other broken windows.
Moir said he tried confronting the man in his front yard, “but he didn’t back down and kind of came at me with a bottle.”
“I don’t know, I think just adrenalin takes over. Tried to be a hero,” he said. “I also tried to get my dog involved, and the dog didn’t want to deal with it, either. So yeah, in the end we just let the police kind of deal with it.”
The incident was “incredibly shocking,” Moir said in an interview, standing in front of two now boarded-up windows on the front of his home.
He said he’s already started to hear other stories from his neighbours, including some who he said told him a man broke into their home and grabbed a bottle of wine and a computer before helping himself to something to eat.
“He was eating a banana,” Moir said.
Evan Moir says he tried confronting a man who he says broke a window in his home Saturday morning. (Katie Lambe/CBC)
Winnipeg Police Service spokesperson Const. Dani McKinnon said early Saturday afternoon while investigators were still working, she could confirm a man was arrested after a window was smashed at Kelvin High School and property was damaged at surrounding homes.
A garbage bin was set on fire and quickly put out, according to reports, and no injuries have been reported, McKinnon said in an email.
Independent MLA Mark Wasyliw was also among the residents whose homes were targeted. He said he awoke to the sound of breaking glass, and went downstairs to find a big hole in his dining room window and a flower pot sitting inside.
MLA Mark Wasyliw was among those whose homes were vandalized Saturday morning. (Katie Lambe/CBC)
An incoherent man wearing a medical mask had his head inside the window, demanding alcohol and “pointing to objects in the house that he wanted,” Wasyliw said.
He said he told the man he was going to call police, which Wasyliw said the man seemed he “could care less” about. When Wasyliw went back upstairs to get his cellphone, he said he heard a second crash from a piece of concrete being thrown through another window.
Winnipeg police responded to Kelvin High School Saturday after a window was smashed and property was damaged at surrounding homes. (Gavin Axelrod/CBC)
“He started going down the street and about five minutes later, I heard crashing down the street from my neighbour’s house,” he said. “I’m told that there’s four homes on the street that have been hit.”
Wasyliw said he believes, based on that interaction, that the man was intoxicated. Wasyliw has been critical of Manitoba’s NDP government after being removed from its caucus in 2024, and said he’s frustrated by what he sees as a failure by city and provincial politicians to address a drug crisis that’s now “spilling over into every community.”
“I don’t know how many more stories do we have to have, how many more shocking events we need to see, before our politicians start taking this seriously,” Wasyliw said in front of his home Saturday.
“Sprinkling a little money here, doing a little project there, we’re well past that. This is a crisis, and Manitobans shouldn’t have to live like this. And it’s getting much much worse.”