A 48-year-old man is charged after allegedly making threats against several youth outside the Winnipeg Islamic Centre in central Winnipeg.
Police were called around 3 p.m. Saturday to the Masjid Bilal on Warnock Street, off Logan Avenue.
A man had approached the youth and made threatening gestures toward them, police said in a news release on Tuesday.
The young people reported the incident to a staff member inside the facility, who then contacted police. When that staff member went outside, the man continued the threatening behaviour, the police release said.
When officers arrived, the man was already gone. Officers found a suspect around 3:30 p.m., a couple of blocks away on Logan, and took him into custody.
He is charged with uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm
The incident happened the day before a shooting outside a synagogue in Belleville, Ont., that wounded a man and a police officer.
In response to the Ontario incident, Winnipeg police announced they would step up patrols around places of worship in the city.
Less than two months ago, shots were fired at a northeast Winnipeg mosque while people were inside.
Two people drove by and fired shots at the Rahma Islamic Centre on July 29, and later the same night, two people on foot attacked the building’s walls with what appeared to be a blunt object, breaking glass.
The National Council of Canadian Muslims — a non-profit organization that advocates for civil liberties and human rights — said that incident was caught on security video.
No one was physically harmed.