WINNIPEG — A suspect has been arrested in Winnipeg in an assault that police say happened when a man broke into a secure area of a University of Manitoba residence and entered a woman's room.
The Winnipeg Police Service says the 46-year-old suspect was arrested when a person reported seeing someone late Friday night who matched a description that investigators released only hours after the incident occurred earlier that day.
He faces various break-and enter-charges, along with charges of sexual assault, robbery, and overcoming resistance by attempting to choke, suffocate or strangle another person.
Police earlier said they responded to the report of break, 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.
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.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 26, 2024.
The Canadian Press
