Homicide rate ‘unprecedented,’ Brandon police say

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This article was published 09/12/2023 (1016 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Mental health issues and drug use were factors in Brandon’s record-setting six homicides this year, police say.

“As in many of our calls, mental health and illicit drugs play a factor in many of these, including in many of the homicides that have been committed in 2023,” Brandon Police Service Sgt. Kirby Sararas told the Sun. This year, she said, has seen a considerable increase in the number of homicide investigations compared to most years in BPS history.

The six homicides have bumped Brandon’s per-capita homicide rate to double that of Winnipeg’s rate this year.

While police are noticing a trend of mental health issues and drug use in the community, community organizations are grappling with the loss and are working to organize around meeting the needs of the city’s most vulnerable.

“Something that we are noticing, where there are people that have no either undiagnosed mental health issues or diagnosed mental health issues and they are treating themselves with illicit drugs oftentimes,” Sararas said.

She added that she hasn’t seen this number of homicides since she started with the force — about 23 years ago.

“The amount [of homicide investigations] we’ve had this year is unprecedented,” Sararas said.

In the past 10 years, the highest homicide count in one year was three. In 2019, there were three and before that, 2013 was the only year that saw three homicides as well. Last year, there was only one homicide and both 2020 and 2021 saw none.

Of the six homicide cases this year, all but one has ended in arrests being made.

The city’s first homicide of the year was in June with the killing of Andre Katzenellenbogen, 31, who died after a fight on Louise Avenue. Dennis Blacksmith, 36, was charged with manslaughter in connection with the death.

Brandon saw two killings in August. In one, 46-year-old Robert Hall was found by police lying on Pacific Avenue with stab wounds. Twenty-five-year-old Jarrod Paul was charged with second-degree murder.

The other slaying that month remains an active investigation, Sararas confirmed. On Aug. 8, a man was found in the laneway between the 400 blocks of 12th and 13th streets. Witnesses who lived in the neighbourhood rushed to give the man CPR, but he suffered from serious injuries and was pronounced deceased on scene.

In September, police arrested and charged Stephen Teetaert, 42, with second-degree murder in the death of Cheryl Mansoff, 63, who police say was assaulted with multiple weapons. Teetaert rented a room from Mansoff in her home in Highland Park Mobile Home Estates. In court, Teetaert’s lawyer is pursuing a not-criminally-responsible assessment for his client.

Last month, Gabriel Heymans, 44, was charged with second-degree murder for the death of Maureen Heymans, 71, after she was found by police dead in an apartment unit in the 200 block of McDiarmid Drive.

Garbriel Heymans, who was also found inside the apartment, was detained at the scene and charged the following day.

Later that month, Eric Lepine was seriously injured after being violently attacked with a hammer then left in a burning house on 15th Street. Ryan Mecas, 32, was charged with aggravated assault, assault with a weapon, and arson with disregard for human life in connection with the attack. A few days later, however, Lepine died of his injuries at Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg and police charged Mecas with second-degree murder.

In each of the closed homicide investigations, police say the victim and accused knew each other.

Antoinette Gravel-Ouelette, co-chair of the Community Wellness Collaborative, an organization that discusses strategies for addressing community issues, says that her heart drops when she hears the number of killings in the community.

“It’s a symptom of what’s happening,” she told the Sun. “I think it’s showing us where some of the gaps are. It’s showing us that some of our vulnerable people, their supports and their needs are not being met.”

Gravel-Ouelette said community organizations are doing everything they can, but they’re also dealing with the lasting impacts of the pandemic and staff fatigue.

“People that work in these areas of supporting vulnerable populations and individuals — there’s a huge pressure and we need to be supporting the people that work in these areas because of burnout,” she said.

The Collaborative is working to help community organizations work together to deliver services more effectively to the community, instead of groups working in silos. Some of their current efforts include trying to make 24-7 access to public washrooms and finding a way to provide meals every day of the week to people who use meal services.

Gravel-Ouelette also hopes the city’s future sobering centre will have a positive impact, giving people the help they need when they ask for it.

She also pointed out that not all of the homicides occured downtown.

“That’s pretty stigmatizing to say, it’s an issue of downtown, when it’s not,” Gravel-Ouelette said. “So, this is about care for community as a whole, so everybody is part of that.”

Sararas said she hopes this year is an exception to the norm of homicides in the city, adding that it’s unclear at this point whether the high number is an indicator of a trend or just an exceptionally bad year. She said officers have training for interacting with people with mental health issues and the police board has asked city council for funds for an initiative that would pair police officers with mental health professionals.

Still, Brandon University sociology professor Chris Schneider warns that general concerns about crime are often addressed by police, which results in more money being diverted to policing.

“We have drugs and substance use and mental health issues that are thematic across all of these murders,” the professor, who researches crime and policing, said. “So it would make perfect sense to invest money in these facilities, mental health facilities and resources, [and] drug rehabilitation centres and resources.”

He said the context of each of the homicides is important for the community to understand and decide where they think best to divert resources in the future.

“The police have more power and better ability to request resources in terms of being in connection with politicians, and police leverage these connections to get the public to agree to provide them with more resources,” Schneider said. “When you look at homeless shelters, drug rehabilitation centres, mental health crisis workers, they lack the same sort of resources to be able to leverage and use power to say to the public, ‘Hey look, this is a mental health issue.’”

» gmortfield@brandonsun.com

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