A 42-year-old man was arrested by Winnipeg police after causing a disturbance outside a Tim Hortons Wednesday night near Isabel Street and William Avenue.
Police received a report of a man possibly armed with a gun outside the coffee shop on Isabel Avenue at around 6:30 p.m.
When officers arrived on scene, they found the man with what looked like a shotgun under his jacket.
The incident was caught on video by multiple bystanders and shared widely on Facebook.
WARNING: Video contains explicit language
Footage shows police repeatedly asking the man to drop the weapon before he was Tasered.
Police said the Taser was used in an effort to deescalate the situation.
Vishavjeet Ladhar works at the Dollar Slice Pizza and called police after the suspect threatened him.
Upon taking the man into custody, police found the weapon was actually a metal pipe strapped to a long piece of wood.
Authorities said the man had also caused a commotion at two other businesses in the 100 block of Isabel Avenue. In both instances, the man threatened to fire at employees an motioned to the weapon.
Martin Eric Sinclair, 42-years-old from Winnipeg, has been charged with:
- Cause Disturbance
- Possess Weapon
- Carry Concealed Weapon, prohibited Device or Ammunition
- Fail to Comply with Probation
LISTEN: Monica Madonick shot one of the videos. She spoke on CJOB about what she saw.
Monica Madonick said she had taken her kids to Tim Hortons Wednesday night after they went skating. As she was leaving the coffee shop, she noticed the man outside behaving ‘fidgety’. She heard police sirens and wondered what was going on. Her kids, who had stayed in the restaurant a little longer, were just exiting when police ran up with guns drawn and yelled at the man to put his hands in the air.
Madonick said she panicked and shouted at her kids to run to her. Her partner ran with the kids to safety down the block and she grabbed her phone and started filming. She said as she was watching, she was hoping the police wouldn’t shoot the man.
“He wasn’t listening… he must have been on some kind of drug, I don’t know.”
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After she finished filming, Madonick said she was afraid the police would take her phone away. She walked over to where her kids were and they all went to the Dollar Slice Pizza for something to eat.
“I was feeding my kids some pizza and all those cops walked in there. That’s where that guy came from… apparently he tried to rob that place.”
“I hardly ever go anywhere. This is why I don’t go anywhere, because Winnipeg is so crazy,” she said.
LISTEN: Winnipeg Police Patrol Sgt. Julio Berzenji spoke about the incident with Geoff Currier on 680 CJOB.
Sgt. Berzenji said this kind of occurrence is happening more and more in Winnipeg.
“The reality is that instances like this do occur in our city, and I would suggest that they are on the rise,” Berzenji said.
Berzenji said officers are given a tremendous amount of training on the use of Tasers and how best to use them to deescalate situations.
While he was not directly involved in the incident, Berzenji said he had viewed the video and was aware of information that had been reported by public citizens. He said the officers were confronted with an individual refusing to comply with orders, who was believed to have a shotgun.
“I gotta be honest with you, there’s not a lot of options that are going to be left available to police, to kind of deescalate or bring that to a conclusion that doesn’t involve deadly force.”
Berzenji commended the officers for their actions, suggesting they took some risks. “Had that been a firearm and had that individual been hell bent on using that firearm, I’m going to suggest the officers themselves could have become seriously injured or killed.”
Berzenji said this particular incident is an example of how Winnipeg police officers routinely put themselves at risk to preserve the lives of people they are protecting as well as the people they may be trying to arrest.
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