Family demanding answers after Winnipeg man left beaten and bloody

WINNIPEG (CityNews) – A Winnipeg woman says her father was brutally beaten and left for dead and when she followed up with police, she found out there was no investigation open.

Erica Daniels says her father didn’t come home on Monday night which she said was both concerning and unusual.

Early Tuesday morning someone called 911 after finding her father unconscious in a pool of his own blood and it wasn’t until Tuesday night after calling multiple hospitals looking for someone who matched her father’s description that Daniels learned of his whereabouts.

On the phone with the Health Sciences Centre, she was told that her father had come out of emergency brain surgery and was going to be in a coma. Daniels says she was upset that no first responders took the time to notify her or her family.

But that quickly turned to anger after learning that 35 hours after the incident, Winnipeg police hadn’t started investigating the attack.

Daniels posted an emotional video on Facebook Wednesday explaining her dad was found in a pool of his own blood Tuesday morning near College Avenue and Andrews Street.

“The police did not make any report,” she said in the video. “There’s absolutely no police report that was done. The police didn’t even put this in their system. And my dad is in critical condition…”

Daniels starts to choke back tears as she expresses her frustration, saying Indigenous people are just “a number in their system.”

In the video, Daniels says she and other members of her family were searching the area around where her father was found beaten for any evidence they could find.

“We have to do the f***ing police’s job… The police have done nothing to help us,” she said.

“My dad means nothing to them.”

WATCH: Erica Daniels’ Facebook video

The Facebook post accompanying the video reads in part, “This is the treatment we get as Indigenous people.”

The post says 35 hours after the first call, WPS had finally opened a file.

CityNews reached out to WPS which said the original 911 call came in as a “medical event” so the Winnipeg Fire and Paramedic Service (WFPS) was sent to the scene, not police.

“The next day (on Aug. 26), the Winnipeg Police Service was made aware by a family member that the individual had been assaulted. The Major Crimes Unit is now actively investigating the incident,” reads a statement from WPS.

“If he was a white male in a white neighbourhood this would have been all over the news, this would be top priority for them to solve. This would have been solved by now,” Daniels told CityNews.

“I do think that because my father is an Indigenous man, that this happened in the north end that it was swept under the rug, they didn’t take it seriously, that it’s another native person in the streets of the north end, and that really hurts my heart because my father is a great man.”

Daniels says there is no excuse for this and what happened to her family. She says this is a situation that highlights the terrible history in this country where Indigenous men and women go missing or end up murdered. She says her dad could have died.

“The fact that 911 was called but there was no police involvement–it was a brutal attack. He was lying in a pool of blood. This was a brutal attack!

“There should have been police involvement from the beginning. When he arrived at the hospital, the hospital should have called the police, the hospital should have notified his family. The ambulance should have notified the police, the police were not involved what so ever even though this was a brutal attack and he was fighting for his life.”

CityNews has reached out to the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA) and a hospital spokesperson says they are looking into it and need more time to review and get back to us.

CityNews will continue to follow and provide updates when information becomes available.