No suspect found after reports of man with knife on University of Manitoba campus
Posted November 19, 2024 9:13 am.
Last Updated November 19, 2024 8:04 pm.
Winnipeg police say no arrest was made because no suspect was located after reports of a man armed with a knife triggered a shelter-in-place advisory for the University of Manitoba on Tuesday morning.
The Winnipeg Police Service determined there was “no longer a threat to public safety” and deemed the incident was “resolved” after searching and clearing the Allen Building on the Fort Garry campus and surrounding areas.
No injuries were reported.
“We have enough information to be able to retract — that’s why we took out… that emergency alert was cancelled — because we do not believe at this point that there was a threat to public safety, no immediate threat to public safety,” WPS Const. Claude Chancy told reporters at an afternoon press conference.
Chancy said investigators are speaking to the person who initially reported that a man with a large knife was spotted on campus. The constable did not say if he believed the initial report was unfounded. “The investigation will determine that,” he said.
All the day’s classes, exams and events on campus were cancelled. Virtual classes and those located on the Bannatyne campus were held, as scheduled.
Authorities received the report around 6:30 a.m., and the first officers arrived on scene around 30 minutes later. Around 7:30 a.m., Winnipeg police urged the public to keep away from the Allen Building via social media posts and an Alert Ready broadcast through the Province’s Emergency Management Operation.
Those emergency alerts, sent out on TV, radio and cellphones, were distributed to phones that pinged off towers near the university, as it wasn’t deemed necessary to issue a citywide alert, Chancy explained.
Two hours after that, the University of Manitoba issued a shelter-in-place advisory, asking all students and staff on campus to stay in place and lock all doors, and urged those not on campus to stay away. The advisory was lifted around 10:30 a.m. after police determined there was no immediate threat.
A large police presence was on scene throughout the morning and into the afternoon.
Not an active shooter situation, campus security says
Gordon Perrier, the director of security services at UM, was asked by reporters — at a later, virtual press conference — why there was a gap between the police’s alert and the university’s advisory.
“So I can say if there was something active in the sense of people were actively being hurt, or someone — we all watch the news nowadays, if there was an active shooter — or someone actively stabbing, or those type of things, we would activate those things immediately,” Perrier said. “In this case, the information isn’t exactly that. So in this case, we worked in conjunction with police, who were the lead at that event.”
Chancy says the search for the possible suspect involved campus security, which first received the report from the complainant about the man with a knife.
“I can’t get into exactly how we received the information, but we did receive the information from, I would say, multiple sources. That’s the best I can put it at this point,” he said.
Perrier explained security received a fire alarm at the Allen Building, followed by a phone call from a complainant inside the building. The threat was ranked at the highest level for UM security, and security personnel were first on scene. Security services then contacted Winnipeg police.
Chancy said the decision to issue the Alert Ready broadcast took multiple factors into consideration.
“Information that was provided to us was very serious in nature,” he explained. “You’ve got a male present, report of a male present with a large knife in an area where there would be a lot of students arriving to school.
“It’s taken very seriously by our service, and that spelled out the steps that we used.”
Perrier says while the notifications may have appeared to come in slowly from the outside, they were delivered as part of a process.
“Communication, often people find frustrating, and want the clearest and shortest route to anything and everything that occurred,” he said. “In this case, things did go out in chunks based on what was occurring on the ground.”
Members of the WPS tactical safety team remained on scene as a precaution later Tuesday, and the major crimes unit will investigate.
Perrier noted the University of Manitoba is fully cooperating with the WPS by turning over CCTV footage. He also established there will be an increased police presence on campus in the coming days.
Students are questioning how the situation was handled, and just how safe they feel on campus overall.
Two students told CityNews they received emails updating them about the ongoing incident at different times — roughly 10 minutes part — while a third said she was never even contacted.
“We didn’t know what was happening. There’s police everywhere,” UM student Avary Achtnig said.
“The messaging is something that a lot of us are hoping that the university will take accountability for because it has not been adequate at all,” added Lucy Barnes.
Tuesday’s incident comes three-and-a-half weeks after a female student said an intruder entered her dorm room and assaulted her on Oct. 25 around 5 a.m. She managed to fight him off while calling for help. A 46-year-old suspect was arrested and charged.
“Right now, so much messed up (expletive) is going on, drama and everything. I don’t even know, it’s just scary. Really scary,” said first-year student Parampreet Singh.
“This is really unsafe. I don’t want to die while I’m studying.”
Chancy said that alleged assault did not influence how police responded to the knife report.
“This is an isolated incident that’s looked at for what it is, based on information we received,” he said. “We don’t base that on prior incidents or to be careful. It has to do with this incident and how serious of a nature it was.”
Perrier says while crime levels on campus have remained relatively stable over the last decade, it is a subject at the forefront of people’s minds.
“I can say that reported crime, taking out COVID years because those are anomalous years, has for the last decade essentially remained the same on our campuses,” he said. “I don’t think that feelings of safety, of course are the same in that sense, I do think that people are feeling safety is a heightened topic that people talk about.”
He stressed while those conversations are happening off campus as well, he understands campuses are “special places.”
“We send our sons and daughters to these locations to learn, and for that I think that, we expect a lot of these campuses, rightfully so,” he said. “And we take the duty of safety on campus extremely seriously.”
–With files from Morgan Modjeski, CityNews
