University of Manitoba dorm attack suspect arrested, but students questioning campus safety

“It’s just so scary and traumatizing.”

That’s how students at the University of Manitoba are describing the assault of a student while in her dorm room just before 5 a.m. Friday morning.

The Winnipeg Police Service says a 46-year-old suspect was arrested later that night when a person reported seeing someone who matched a description that investigators released only hours after the incident occurred.

Garry Junior Edwards is facing various break-and enter-charges, along with charges of sexual assault, robbery, and overcoming resistance by attempting to choke, suffocate or strangle another person.

The entire situation has left U of M students feeling deeply concerned for their safety on campus.

“Freaked out, objectively freaked out,” Eva Williams told CityNews.

“We’re a good kilometre from anywhere else, it feels like it’s just us on campus like you don’t really think anything is going to happen, and then it does.”

Police said they responded to the report of break and enter and assault at 4:45 a.m. Friday in a student housing complex on the premises of the University of Manitoba on Dafoe Road.

Officers met with a woman who reported an intruder entered her room and assaulted her, and that she managed to fight him off while calling for help.

Police say university security staff were alerted and police were contacted, and that the woman was treated for injuries and was in stable condition afterward.

“It was preoccupying because like what if it happened to me, yeah it was shocking,” said student Andrea Morrison on Saturday.

“I remember passing by seeing the police and the cop cars and it was scary because I didn’t really know what was happening, and then I received the e-mail and it was shocking to know that something like that is happening in a place that’s really close, like in our school,” added Zoe Mora.

Increased safety measures

Following the incident, the university has increased the presence of institutional safety officers in the entrances of the residences and lobbies, and students say this has helped put their minds at ease.

“It was pretty easy for anyone to enter any of the buildings but yesterday when we came, last night there was someone checking for the fobs and the keys to make sure that you’re a resident,” said Mora. “So yeah, it’s worrying but it’s nice to see that they are taking action.”

“Now that they have more security it makes me feel a lot more safe, but even just walking to class like it’s scary,” Sierra Clelland added.

“Living on campus it’s supposed to be safe but they’ve implied more security now, there’s more security measures, so that calms me down a bit,” said Morrison.

The suspect was arrested about one kilometre down the road from the university Friday around 11 p.m.

Const. Dani McKinnon said Saturday the suspect was known to police, but she would not confirm if he was the same person with a similar name and age as a man who was the subject of a sex-offender notification by the Manitoba government in May.

The province’s justice ministry had warned at the time that an inmate was being released from Stony Mountain Institution on a sentence of being unlawfully at large. It said he had a lengthy criminal record including convictions for sexual assault with a weapon, armed robbery, breaking and entering to commit theft, theft, assault and numerous breaches of recognizance.

The warning said that while he’d participated in treatment programming in the past, he was still considered high risk to reoffend in a sexual and/or sexually violent manner, and that all females, both adults and children, were at risk.

–With files from The Canadian Press