Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - October 18, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba A4 ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM H ELD at gunpoint and faced with the decision to flee, freeze or fight during a robbery at his home business last week, Rajan Dhal- la chose the latter — striking back at thieves before being injured by gunfire. Dhalla, 33, was shot in the legs during the brazen crime. He is now recovering in hospital, where he con- tinues to replay the violence in his head. “It is extreme pain,” he said Friday. “It is very traumatic… (I) can’t sleep. The whole thing is on my mind.” The Oct. 9 incident began just before 6:30 p.m., when four masked men — at least two of whom were carrying guns; the other two were armed with a ham- mer and baseball bat — burst into his home-based jewelry business on Bach- man Bay in The Maples. Footage from the incident (which can be viewed at wfp.to/robbery) shows the suspects heading for an area of the home where a large assortment of jewelry was stored in glass display cases. Dhalla’s father was dragged away from the display and shot in the leg, as Dhalla picked up items to throw at the thieves. He was shot and collapsed to the floor in pain, the video shows. The men cleared valuables from the shelves and threatened to kill Dhalla if he continued to fight, he said. Several other family members were also present, including multiple chil- dren, and footage shows one of the rob- bers ushering them into the garage at gunpoint. The Winnipeg Police Service con- firmed officers were sent to the house and found two men with gunshot wounds. The victims, ages 56 and 33, were taken to hospital in unstable and stable condition, respectively. Investigators are searching for a black 2020 or 2021 Volkswagen Jetta suspected of being involved with the crime. No arrests have been made. The vehicle arrived from eastbound Jefferson Avenue and circled the block a few times before stopping in front of the home before the robbery. It was last seen heading west on Jefferson from Argate Bay after the robbery, WPS said in a news release. The licence plate number of the vehicle is unknown. Separate footage from outside the home shows the masked men running out to the sedan with the stolen goods in their hands. Time stamps on the vid- eos show the incident began and ended within about three minutes. On Friday, Dhalla was surrounded by family members at his hospital room, his injured father was sleeping in the bed next to him. Dhalla’s father is recovering well, but Dhalla remains in extreme pain. He underwent surgery for a fractured femur, and one of the bullets struck him near his groin. Doctors told him that shot could have been fatal, had it hit him just a few centimetres away, he said. It could take him months to physical- ly recover, but he expects the psycho- logical damage to last longer. “Everyone needs to know what is going on here. We are not safe in the home, basically,” he said. He said the robbers stole about $1 million worth of gold, calling the theft “a huge loss.” Roughly four months before the in- cident, somebody visited the store to warn Dhalla he would be robbed. He did not report that to police at the time because he did not believe the warning was credible, he said. He opened the business in 2022, after saving money by working as a trans- port-truck driver. He said he was plan- ning to move the business into a store- front that is currently being renovated. A review of City of Winnipeg permits shows Rajan Jewellers is authorized as a home-based business. A city website says the permit allows for a jeweller with a maximum floor area of 400 square feet, or 25 per cent of the gross floor area of the home, whichever is less. The permit does not allow “employ- ees or customers on premises, and per- sonal service provided on premises,” and is “limited to paperwork which may include the taking of telephone or- ders,” the website says. Dhalla said most of the business is conducted online, but people period- ically come to the store to look at the products they are purchasing. Some customers were inside the store at the time of the robbery, the footage shows. Police are seeking video related to the incident, including any from ve- hicles driving in the area around that time. They asked anyone with relevant video to call the unit at 204-986-6219 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 204- 786-TIPS. tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca NEWS I MANITOBA SATURDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2025 MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Rajan Dhalla, 33, is recovering in hospital after being shot last week during a robbery at his home-based jewelry business. TYLER SEARLE Home-based jeweller, father shot during robbery SUPPLIED Video of the Oct. 9 crime shows two of the thieves holding guns while Rajan Dhalla sits on the floor behind glass cases. Thieves steal gold valued at $1M A city resource centre that focuses on harm reduction is sounding the alarm about two overdoses Thursday that were reversed only after intensive intervention, underscoring the urgent need to get its mobile drug-testing unit on the road. A drug alert posted by Safer Sites — a social media page run by Sunshine House’s Mobile Overdose Prevention Site — said the two people who over- dosed had symptoms that indicated “complex, multi-substance drug tox- icity.” One required lengthy intervention by first responders, including eight doses of the opioid-OD reversing drug nalox- one, to revive the individual. The other also needed help from paramedics, and asked to be transported to hospital, “which is unusual,” the alert noted. Sunshine House executive director Levi Foy said the challenging situa- tions might have been avoided if the non-profit organization’s mobile unit had its federal government licensing in place, allowing staff to use its drug-test- ing equipment. “It’s more difficult for us to keep tabs on what’s happening on the ground,” Foy said. “We don’t know what’s in it, some- times (users) don’t, and there’s no really good system right now.” Sunshine House’s drug-testing ser- vices, which operated out of an RV, ground to a halt after the vehicle was totalled in a hit-and-run collision July 2. The Salvation Army donated a de- commissioned ambulance as a replace- ment, but it needs a federal exemption under section 56.1 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act to provide safe-injection and drug-testing servi- ces. Health Canada lists the Winnipeg ap- plication as being in the “review” stage and “awaiting key information before decision can be taken,” but Foy isn’t sure what’s taking so long. As the weather gets colder and people stay inside, the need to be mobile and testing drugs only increases, Foy said. “If people have access to warm shel- ter and a place outside of the elements to use substances, more often than not they will visit us to grab the safe (drug) supplies that they might need, and then use in those places,” he said. “With testing at least they have an opportunity to check before they go off on their own.” Nine Circles Community Health Centre has been offering drug-testing services since April. The commun- ity health hub in West Broadway was selected by the province to get one of two infrared-light machines that can analyze small samples of substances and identify their makeup. The other machine is being used by the Winnipeg Regional Health Author- ity’s healthy sexuality and harm reduc- tion’s street connections team. The price tag for the equipment was $200,000, which includes the cost of training staff to use them, and were purchased while the province worked on plans for a permanent supervised consumption site, addictions minister Bernadette Smith said at the time. Kim Bailey, director of prevention, testing and wellness at Nine Circles, said while drug testing is a useful tool for the community, it does not replace the need for a supervised consumption site. “It’s not going to answer or solve the overdose crisis in itself, it’s one tool along with naloxone, safe consumption sites… it will help mitigate the harms of a toxic drug supply,” Bailey said. Bailey and Foy said a useful addition to the NDP government’s strategy to deal with the drug crisis would be an online database containing drug-test- ing results. Organizations would have a better idea of what is being detected in street drugs. “Ideally what you’d have is all the dif- ferent drug-testing folks providing data into a bigger database so you can start to see the trends and sort of the bigger picture,” Bailey said. “This way you start to get some in- sight into the drug supply, and that’s im- portant information in terms of policy, decision-making, interventions.” Provincial data shows in the first five months of 2025 there were 167 suspect- ed substance-related deaths. In 2024 there were 570 total suspected sub- stance-related deaths recorded. nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca Non-profit sounds alarm about ‘complex’ toxic drug ODs Mobile prevention unit awaits federal approval NICOLE BUFFIE MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES Kim Bailey, director of prevention, testing and wellness at Nine Circles Community Health Centre, says an online database would help track drug-testing results. MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES Sunshine House executive director Levi Foy ;