Police label death in Point Douglas park suspicious
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/06/2019 (1745 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Police believe they have identified a man found dead in a Point Douglas park early Wednesday.
The man’s next of kin have to be notified before his identity can be publicly released, Winnipeg Police Service spokesman Const. Rob Carver said at a news conference. The death is considered suspicious, but it hasn’t been ruled a homicide.
An individual who works in the area at Higgins Avenue and Maple Street found a man’s body around 7 a.m.
Emergency personnel were called to the scene. By early afternoon, yellow police tape cordoned off a small, grassed open space beside a historic fire hall and William Whyte Park. A modified shopping cart full of belongings, topped with a small Canadian flag, was visible in the area.
Carver told reporters there is “very little information” police can speak publicly about regarding the circumstances of the man’s death.
The death is suspicious, he said, because of “information at the scene I can’t release.”
Carver said investigators didn’t see any signs of a drug overdose or anything that would constitute an obvious accidental or natural death. More details could be released later, as the homicide unit continues its investigation.
Onlookers wondered aloud what had happened as they passed by the scene Wednesday afternoon.
Two employees at a business across the street told the Free Press they noticed the cart and a tent set up in the park just after 6 a.m., well before the area was under police investigation, but said the items hadn’t been there the previous day.
The space isn’t typically used as a homeless camp, they said. It is more common for people to set up temporary shelter in a hedged-in, grassy area beside the former Canadian Pacific Railway station across the street, they said.
If the death is confirmed to be a homicide, it would be the city’s second within 48 hours, and the 24th so far this year.
On Monday, 23-year-old Chad McKenzie was shot to death outside a West End elementary school just before 6 a.m. Police have not yet announced the arrests of any suspects in that case, but Carver told reporters McKenzie’s death doesn’t appear to be the result of a random attack.
Halfway through 2019, the city has already surpassed last year’s total number of homicides. There were 22 slayings in 2018.
katie.may@freepress.mb.ca
Katie May
Reporter
Katie May is a general-assignment reporter for the Free Press.