River Heights homeowner Evan Moir and his wife were woken up to a window being smashed at the front of their residence Saturday morning. The property was one of six houses broken into on Kingsway, leaving the community in disbelief.
“Basically just assumed it wasn’t anything nefarious, you know, a bird or something who knows. But then I peeked out the window, and there was just this perpetrator just wandering around,” Moir explained.
Around 6:30 a.m., Winnipeg police responded to multiple 911 calls in the Crescentwood neighbourhood regarding a man breaking into homes, including Kelvin High School.
Evan Moir stands in front of a boarded-up window following a break-in on July 25, 2026. (Koby Mitchell, CityNews)
“I got my courage up, went outside. He was going towards the neighbour’s house; I tried to kind of slow him down, move him away from everyone. Then kind of at the same time he turned around and came at me pretty quickly with the bottle, and he was kind of in attack mode so just kind of back up, kept eye contact the whole time and made sure I wasn’t looking at him and just kind of walked back into the house,” said Moir.
“Well, the first time we met some of the neighbours that morning, actually very surprising.”
One of those neighbours was Fort Garry MLA Mark Wasyliw.
“I got up, go down stairs, look in my dining room and one of the panes in my picture window had this sort of massive cannonball-size hole in it, and there was this guy with a surgical mask with his head sticking into my dining room,” said Wasyliw.
Wasyliw said the man launched a heavy planter through his window and, in what he described as “Drunken rage,” demanded alcohol and other possessions from his house.
“The guy was essentially a zombie. There was no talking to him, no reasoning with him. And that’s the scariest thing of all. If the idea of the cops coming doesn’t scare you and you keep doing what you’re doing, then how do you, we respond as a community,” said Wasyliw.
Wasyliw says that he’s angry with the situation, but not at the perpetrator.
“It was very apparent to me that this was somebody in the throes of a mental health drug crisis and was somebody who absolutely needs help and was desperate. And they were unpredictable and they were erratic. That made them scary,” said Wasyliw.
Police have arrested 35-year-old Ralph Shane Knott after he was flagged down by one of the victims.
He was arrested and faces several different charges. He remains in custody.
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