Residents and nearby neighbours of an apartment complex on Dalhousie Drive in Winnipeg were shocked to learn the alleged killer of an Oshawa, Ont., family lived inside the quiet building that’s mostly home to international University of Manitoba students and new Canadians.
Five people were slain — including the alleged shooter — after a quintuple shooting in east Oshawa early Friday, Durham Regional Police told reporters. A white Ford F-150 pick-up truck with Manitoba licence plates was found at the scene.
Family identified the Oshawa victims as Chris Traynor, a teacher at Monsignor Paul Dwyer Catholic High School in Oshawa, and his three children: Bradley Traynor, a student at the University of Guelph, Adelaide Traynor, a Grade 10 student, and 11-year-old Joseph Traynor. Mother Loretta Traynor was shot but survived.
Meanwhile, the truck belonged to the children’s uncle and Loretta’s brother, 48-year-old Winnipeg resident Mitchell Lapa, Global News learned Friday.
Police said he was uninvited into the home — Lapa was the lone suspect in the investigation and Durham officers said he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Winnipeg police executed a search warrant on a suite in the Dalhousie Drive apartment in connection with the incident, Winnipeg Police Service sources said Friday.
Residents and neighbours saw police, including some who appeared to be detectives carrying cameras, at the Winnipeg apartment throughout the afternoon and evening.
“It’s terrifying,” said Tyler Saj, who has owned a home adjacent to the Winnipeg apartment for nine years, when Global News told him of the Dalhousie Drive apartment’s connection to the brutal Ontario slayings.
“To think that you could just go and do that — there’s no words to describe that.”
A resident of the complex, Charles Idabor, said a man matching Lapa’s description drove a white pick-up truck and lived in the apartment. He identified media photographs of the truck as identical to the one he parked nearby for a year but hadn’t been seen in a week or two.
“It’s scary, but at the same time, you wouldn’t know until it happens,” Idabor said of his home’s connection to the shootings.
Idabor spoke to police Friday, who told him he wasn’t in danger — he gave officers the caretaker’s phone number.
“I saw two cop cars parked… near the door. They were all here, all day — morning until night,” he said, before seeing officers in plain clothes arrive.
— with files from Nick Westoll, Gabby Rodrigues and Catherine McDonald
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