Winnipeg Free Press

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Joseph Evans, 22, pleaded guilty to manslaugh- ter for his part in the May 2022 stabbing death of Richard Contois. “Events like this cause us all to be fearful and suspicious of one another,” Court of King’s Bench Justice Theodor Bock said before sentencing Evans to 14 years in prison. “It diminishes us all and deprives us of the kind of life we want for ourselves and each other — a life that ought to include being able to walk or cycle on the streets of Winnipeg on a springtime evening.” Court heard Contois was riding southbound on the bridge at approximately 10:20 p.m. when he crossed paths with Evans and a 17-year-old male co-accused. There were no witnesses to the ensuing “alter- cation” in which Contois was stabbed 12 times in his face, neck, chest and back, Crown attorney Nick Reeves told court, reading from an agreed statement of facts. “Mr. Evans admits he was responsible for a number of these injuries,” Reeves said. Police officers on patrol came across Contois and he was taken to hospital, where he was pro- nounced dead. Surveillance video captured the two suspects walking onto the bridge together and then off the bridge with Contois’s bicycle. Police reviewed additional surveillance that showed them arriving at a Stella Walk residence 20 minutes later, each of them visibly in posses- sion of a knife, Reeves said. RCMP arrested Evans nearly a month later in his home community of Norway House. Questioned by police, Evans said he was present for the attack, but did not admit to stabbing Con- tois. Evans was originally charged with second-de- gree murder but in a plea bargain admitted to the lesser offence of manslaughter. Reeves said an autopsy could not confirm more than one knife was used to kill Contois, leaving it open for the defence to argue it was only the youth accused who had stabbed Contois. As well, a fanny pack belonging to Evans, which was seized by police and believed to have held a knife used to stab Contois, contained no DNA linking Evans to the crime. “Both Mr. Evans and the prosecution had com- pelling evidence that could lead to an acquittal or a conviction for second-degree murder,” Reeves said. “The prosecution did not want to risk an acquit- tal and have Mr. Evans not held responsible for the murder of Mr. Contois. Mr. Evans did not want to risk being convicted of second-degree murder and receiving a life sentence.” Contois’s death “has literally brought me to my knees,” his father told court in a tear-filled victim impact statement. “You can’t put a price on the loss of my son,” Ri- chard Fillion said. “We were each other’s greatest support.” Court heard Evans had been abandoned by his parents when he was an infant and was raised by his grandparents. As a child, he suffered abuse and neglect. As a youth, he abused substances. He has little schooling and no work history. Defence lawyer Saul Simmonds said Evans shows the signs of someone who has fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, but no formal diagnosis has been made. “I am particularly struck by the lack of social supports that seem to be provided to Mr. Evans during his short life,” Bock said. “It seems easy now to predict that without help and support, Mr. Evans would be at great risk of doing harm to himself or others.” Evans apologized in court to Contois’s family, which Bock said he accepted as a genuine sign of remorse. Evans received credit for time served, reducing his remaining sentence to just under 10 years. Charges against the youth co-accused were stayed by the Crown in 2023. dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca DEAN PRITCHARD Man reaches plea bargain for fatal stabbing of cyclist Report sheds light on dramatic hostage rescue, fatal shooting A REPORT by the province’s police watchdog says officers made a split-second decision to try to free a woman in a hostage-taking that ended with officers fatally shooting a man. Methamphetamine was found in the 52-year-old man’s system, the In- dependent Investigation Unit of Mani- toba said in a report released Monday. The shooting happened inside an apart- ment suite at 25 Furby St. on the after- noon of Dec. 28, 2023. The Winnipeg Police Service has pre- viously said the man, whom they did not publicly identify, was a person of inter- est in the slaying of Delta, B.C., truck driver Farah Mohamud, 34. Mohamud’s body was found in a suite on the fifth floor of the same apartment complex on Boxing Day 2023. The IIU report does not mention the slaying. A 23-year-old man escaped the hos- tage situation via a balcony. A member of the WPS tactical support team con- vinced the hostage-taker to release a 33-year-old woman and a three-year- old child while talking to him for two hours through a hole in the door made by a police battering ram. The ram failed to knock the barricaded door down. Officers used a drone to monitor the man as he continued to hold a 19-year- old woman at knifepoint. At times, the man was pushing her body against the hole and threatening to kill her. The of- ficer who negotiated the release of the two hostages told the IIU he was ready to shoot the man if he could, but the man was always holding the woman in front of him, with a knife to her throat. The man made various demands, including for a pack of cigarettes, and “would start a countdown for when the task needed to be completed,” the re- port said. Police were authorized to try to res- cue the woman if there was an oppor- tunity. One officer watching the situa- tion on a video monitor had been given “background information” that the man was involved in an earlier hostage-tak- ing that had “significantly injured the hostage.” When he saw the hostage-taker bend down to the ground, creating some sep- aration from the woman, he told the rescue team to enter. Two officers said in prepared state- ments that they believed the man was going to harm his hostage. They both fired four to six rifle shots at the hos- tage-taker. A preliminary autopsy report found the man died at the scene from gunshot wounds to the head area, the IIU report said. The officer who became the primary negotiator once he arrived said he did not know about the sudden rescue at- tempt until it was underway. “It is my view that, in the full con- sideration of the circumstances of this hostage-taking incident, the use of lethal force by the subject officers was authorized and justified by law,” IIU acting civilian director Bruce Sychuk wrote in the report. The woman officers rescued was held hostage for about five hours. She was interviewed twice by the IIU but did not recall many details about the in- cident, the report said, except that the man was angry at her for dropping her phone just before he was shot. The city’s then-police chief told re- porters at the time that officers did not know whether the man knew the hostages or how he might have known them, adding he was known to frequent the building. Danny Smyth also said the dead man had an “extensive” criminal record for violence and weapons offences and was subject to several weapons prohibitions. The IIU also announced Tuesday that an officer acted reasonably in tackling a shoplifter who suffered injuries, in- cluding a brain bleed, on the 2000 block of Corydon Avenue on June 16. fpcity@freepress.mb.ca ADAM TREUSCH FREE PRESS FILES Police responded to a hostage-taking situation at an apartment building on Furby Street. Dropped cellphone gave police a chance they decided to take Massive power outage in Spain and Portugal leaves thousands stranded BARCELONA, Spain — An unpreced- ented blackout brought much of Spain and Portugal to a standstill Monday, stranding thousands of train passen- gers and leaving millions without phone and internet coverage and access to cash from ATMs across the Iberian Peninsula. The sudden crash of the power grid left authorities searching for its cause. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez addressed the nation and said that al- most 11 hours after the nation ground to a halt, government experts were still trying to determine what happened. “We have never had a complete col- lapse of the system,” Sánchez said, before detailing that at 12:33 p.m. on Monday Spain’s power grid lost 15 giga- watts, the equivalent of 60 per cent of its national demand, in five seconds. Spanish power distributor Red Eléc- trica’s head of operations Eduardo Pri- eto said the event was “exceptional and extraordinary.” Spain had recovered nearly 50 per cent of its power by 11 p.m., and the prime minister pledged that the entire country of 48 million would have lights back on by the end of today. It was the second serious European power outage in less than six weeks af- ter a March 20 fire shut down Heath- row Airport in the U.K., and it came as authorities across Europe gird against sabotage backed by Russia. The Portuguese National Cyberse- curity Center in a statement said there was no sign the outage was due to a cyberattack. Teresa Ribera, European Commission executive vice-president in charge of promoting clean energy, indicated the same to journalists in Brussels and called the power outage “one of the most serious episodes re- corded in Europe in recent times.” “We are analyzing all the potential causes without discarding any hypoth- esis,” Sánchez said. The outage began at midday. Offices closed and traffic was snarled in Ma- drid and Lisbon, while some civilians in Barcelona directed traffic. Train servi- ces in both countries stopped. Emergency services and rail work- ers in Spain helped evacuate some 35,000 people from over 100 trains that stopped on the tracks when electricity was cut. By 11 p.m. passengers from 11 trains still needed evacuating, Sánchez said. In Madrid, hundreds of people at a bus stop that takes travellers to the air- port tried to hitchhike as buses didn’t come by or arrived full of passengers. Many held improvised signs and tried to convince drivers to take them. “I’ve been here for almost three hours, trying to get someone to take me to the airport because my family arrived today and I can’t talk to them,” Jessica Fernández told The Associated Press. “This is terrifying.” The subway systems shut down. Hospitals and other emergency ser- vices switched to generators and gas stations stopped working. It wasn’t possible to make calls on most mobile phone networks, though some apps were sporadically working. People searched for battery-powered radios. It is rare to have such a widespread out- age across the Iberian Peninsula, with a combined population of about 60 million people. Spain’s Canary Islands, Balearic Islands and the territories of Ceuta and Melilla, located across the Mediterran- ean in Africa, were not affected. After an extraordinary meeting of the National Security Council, Sánchez said the army would distribute gener- ators and other material to the hard- est-hit areas today. The Portuguese Cabinet convened an emergency meeting at the prime min- ister’s residence. Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said he had spoken several times to Sánchez and expected power to be restored by the end of the day. Portugal’s government said the out- age appeared to stem from problems outside the country, an official told na- tional news agency Lusa. Electricity was being pulled from Morocco and France to restore power to southern and northern Spain, Spain’s prime minister said, thanking their gov- ernments. Spain was also increasing the production from hydroelectric and com- bined cycle thermal power plants. — The Associated Press RENATA BRITO, BARRY HATTON AND JOSEPH WILSON formerly the Society for Manitobans with Disabilities ;