Youth gets probation for stabbing passenger on bus

A Brandon teen who stabbed a man on a Winnipeg Transit bus and then spent eight months in custody was sentenced to two years of probation with 50 hours of community service on Wednesday.

“You’re hurting people and you have to stop,” Judge Shauna Hewitt-Michta told the offender in Brandon provincial court. “You’re almost an adult, and if you’re doing this kind of thing as an adult, even again as a youth, you’re going to be spending a lot of time in jail.”

The 17-year-old boy, who the Sun cannot name under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, pleaded guilty to assault causing bodily harm, assault and possessing a weapon for a dangerous purpose, along with several counts of breaching court orders.

The Crown and defence jointly recommended that the judge take into consideration the time the teen spent in custody and sentence him to two years of probation with 50 hours of community service.

Crown attorney Caroline Lacey read the facts of the offences.

On April 2, 2025, the youth and his adult cousin boarded a Winnipeg Transit bus near the Millennium Library on Donald Street.

The youth started talking to a man sitting directly across from him, but the man didn’t hear him initially because he was listening to music through earphones.

When the man realized the teen was talking to him, he removed his earphones. The youth demanded that the man give him the sweater he was wearing, and the man declined.

“(He) sprang up and lunged at (the victim) and tried to rip the sweater he was wearing from his body,” Lacey said. The teen’s cousin punched the victim several times as well, she added.

Another passenger intervened, ending the attack.

While the man was pulling his sweater back on, the youth stabbed him once in the abdomen before fleeing with his cousin, Lacey said.

Members of the Winnipeg Police Service arrived, and an ambulance transported the victim to the Health Sciences Centre.

Passengers who saw the altercation gave statements to police and shared cellphone footage. Winnipeg Transit cameras also captured the attack, Lacey said.

Police executed a search warrant at the teen’s residence on April 12, 2025, and found several pieces of clothing that the teen and his cousin were wearing in the videos of the assault, including shoes with blood on them, court heard.

Officers arrested the youth, who told police he had been intoxicated and his memory was very fragmented, the Crown said.

“Anytime this level of violence is inflicted on someone, especially by someone who’s so young … there needs to be some sort of intervention, and frankly, (a) serious punitive aspect as well,” Lacey said.

Prior to the stabbing, the teen was involved in several other offences in Winnipeg.

On Nov. 24, 2024, the teen was with his friends in the city’s West End when he saw his brother’s former partner with a man and encouraged his friends to assault her, Lacey said. She said the victim was kicked in the body.

Days later, police arrested the teen.

He was released from custody and proceeded to breach a probation order that he was on by not reporting to his probation officer as directed.

On Jan. 31, 2025, Winnipeg police arrested the teen on Portage Avenue and found a machete secured to his chest with a cross strap, Lacey said.

The youth was released on Feb. 10, 2025, on a release order with a condition that he report to probation once a day and obey by a curfew. Between Feb. 15 and March 3 of that year, there were several dates he didn’t report as directed.

Defence lawyer Matthew Raffey said his client is grateful that the victims didn’t appear to have long-lasting injuries and acknowledged alcohol was a “significant” contributing factor in his offending.

Raffey pointed out several triable issues, including that the woman who was assaulted has been in and out of his client’s brother’s life, indicating that she may not be willing to participate in the prosecution.

In relation to the bus attack, he said identity could have been a triable issue.

Despite this, the teen still decided to plead guilty, Raffey said.

Raffey said his client didn’t have a lot of insight into the motivation behind the stabbing, “except to say he struggles to control his emotions (and) felt slighted for whatever reason that the person was ignoring him … and then acted in this kind of inexplicable way.”

Raffey said the teen’s life is “marked by a significant amount of childhood poverty and disruption.”

The boy was born in Brandon but bounced around several different communities and with several different family members. At one point, the teen, his younger brother and his mother were homeless, court heard.

Since the offences, the teen has been diagnosed with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and a mild intellectual disability, Raffey said.

Raffey said his client’s mother is working to get him into a youth rehabilitation and recovery program, and the teen is looking forward to eventually going back to school.

Hewitt-Michta went along with the joint recommendation but said it wasn’t necessarily a sentence she would come up with based on the circumstances of the offences, specifically the stabbing.

However, she said the sentence was justified by the lawyers and encouraged the teen to get the help he needs so he doesn’t hurt anyone else.

» sanderson@brandonsun.com