Weapons charges after ice cream shop confrontation

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This article was published 26/05/2022 (698 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg woman is shaken, after a man pointed a replica shotgun at her and her father at a Marion Street ice cream shop.

Jessica Bousquet, 27, was on a bench outside the Dairi-Wip Drive-In Tuesday evening, sharing a meal with her father on the third anniversary of her mother’s death, when a stranger confronted the pair with what appeared to be a shotgun.

“He was kind of like walking backwards, and he’s pointing this gun at me, and the kid’s not saying anything at all,” she told the Free Press on Friday. “It honestly took me a couple seconds to realize what was happening because I really didn’t understand. You feel like it’s a joke almost at first.”

Her father attempted to give the man a burger in an attempt to pacify him, when the suspect then pointed the gun at him. Bousquet ran, alerting a nearby family that someone had a gun in the area, and entering Dairi-Wip. Her father soon followed; staff locked the doors and waited for police.

“I was crying and shaking. I was scared,” she said. “My dad was also crying, he was like, ‘I thought I was going to die.’”

Winnipeg Police Service spokesperson Const. Dani McKinnon said the suspect was arrested nearby. The weapon was a pellet gun, police said, made to look like a shotgun.

Tyler Packo, 30, faces nine charges related to firearms and “breach-related offences.”

Bousquet said she feels like her late mother was watching over her and her father that day — and the city feels less safe than it once did.

“I definitely think it’s getting less and less safe. You’ve seen the crime rise each day… afterwards, all I could think about was seeing the gun,” she said.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca