A man has been charged after police say he made threatening gestures at youth outside a mosque in Winnipeg.
Officers with the Winnipeg Police Service (WPS) responded to Winnipeg Islamic Centre Masjid Bilal on Warnock Street at approximately 3 p.m. Saturday.
Several youth were outside the centre when a 48-year-old man made threatening gestures towards them, prompting the youth to inform a staff member, Winnipeg police said in a news release.
Get breaking National news
When staff went outside to speak with the man, he “continued the threatening behaviour,” according to police. After receiving a call from staff, police arrested the man roughly 30 minutes later, a few blocks away on Logan Avenue.
He has been charged with uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm and was detained in custody.
“At this time, we are treating this as an individual incident and are not drawing connections to any other occurrences,” Winnipeg police told Global News in an email statement.
Hakim Ghulam, chair of the board at the Manitoba Islamic Association, said some youths at the association are “worried” after Saturday’s events.
“We don’t want to see fear in the eyes of children. Children from any community, in any (place of) worship, whether it’s a synagogue, mosque, temple or church. They need to be protected. They need to be safe. They need to feel secure,” Ghulam said.
“They come to seek peace there, not to go through these kinds of situations.”
Comments
Comments closed.
Due to the sensitive and/or legal subject matter of some of the content on globalnews.ca, we reserve the ability to disable comments from time to time.
Please see our Commenting Policy for more.