Eight months before he was accused of attacking a group of people — including children — with bear spray, Tiren Dettanikkeaze was in custody for a similar crime.
Prior to that, he was sentenced for stabbing somebody in the neck.
Dettanikkeaze, 25, is in police custody and faces numerous charges for a random assault in the Spence neighbourhood Monday in which he allegedly discharged bear spray at eight people, including a mother and her baby and toddler.
THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES/John Woods
Tiren Dettanikkeaze, 25, is in custody and faces numerous charges for a random assault in the Spence neighbourhood Monday in which he allegedly discharged bear spray at eight people, including a mother and her baby and toddler.
Court records show those charges are the latest on a lengthy rap sheet for the Winnipeg man, who has been known to police since he was a youth.
Last June, Dettanikkeaze pleaded guilty to assaulting a security guard and robbing a woman in separate incidents.
“The robbery, that’s really bad… it’s a very serious charge and your record is going to reflect that,” provincial court Judge Mary Kate Harvie warned Dettanikkeaze when he appeared in court.
“If you’re back in trouble, who knows what’s going to happen to you next time.”
Before accepting his guilty pleas, Harvie listened as Crown prosecutor Sarah Murdoch outlined the night of Nov. 24, 2022, when Dettanikkeaze confronted a woman walking down a Sherbrook Street alleyway and demanded her purse.
“She hesitates because she is scared, and then Mr. Dettanikkeaze produces a can of bear spray and he deploys that into her face,” Murdoch said, describing how Dettanikkeaze then fled with the woman’s belongings.
After the attack, Dettanikkeaze located the victim’s identification in her purse, tracked her down on social media and sent her a barrage of threatening messages, Murdoch said.
“He said to her he ‘was going to keep robbing you, b——,” Murdoch said. “Obviously, in these circumstances that’s quite aggravating and pretty scary behaviour.”
The woman contacted police after the robbery, providing officers with a probation services appointment card Dettanikkeaze had dropped as he ran away. The victim was later able to pick him out of a photo lineup, Murdoch said.
Roughly one month before the robbery, Dettanikkeaze completed a three-month conditional sentence for stabbing a person in the neck with a sharp object, court heard.
The robbery was the second offence Dettanikkeaze committed in November 2022. Police picked him up from The Forks earlier that month after he got in a fight with a security guard, kicking him in the lower body at least four times as the pair tussled on the ground.
Dettanikkeaze was eventually restrained. While waiting for police to take him into custody, he unleashed a torrent of racial slurs at the security guard, warning him he “would be out in four hours and would come back to get him,” Murdoch said.
Police took him into custody, processed him and released him on an undertaking.
He went on to commit the robbery later that month and remained free until January 2023, when he was arrested.
Dettanikkeaze told police he was drunk at the time of the purse snatching and later wrote a letter to the victim, expressing remorse and telling her “I’m sorry and this is not who I truly am,” Murdoch said.
Murdoch and defence lawyer Jodi Myskiw agreed on a joint sentence for Dettanikkeaze, recommending he receive about two years in custody.
Harvie accepted the recommendation, giving Dettanikkeaze a 16-month sentence with credit for time served. He was to spend four months in custody and then serve a conditional sentence (similar to house arrest) of 12 months upon his release.
Myskiw said Dettanikkeaze has connections to the Lac Brochet community but was taken away from his mother as an infant due to her “substance use and unwillingness to parent.”
His lawyer noted Dettanikkeaze was abused while in care, but later placed in a loving foster home around the age of five.
Myskiw noted Dettanikkeaze actively participated in several rehabilitative programs while in custody and intended to continue with those throughout his sentence.
“He needs routine because when he has free time, he fills it negatively, she said. “For Mr. Dettanikkeaze, (drugs and alcohol are) a recipe for disaster and put him right on that downward spiral.”
Myskiw and Murdoch considered Gladue factors and medical diagnoses affecting Dettanikkeaze as they determined their joint recommendation. Further details were not provided on the court record.
tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca
Tyler Searle
Reporter
Tyler Searle is a multimedia producer who writes for the Free Press‘s city desk. A graduate of Red River College Polytechnic’s creative communications program, he wrote for the Stonewall Teulon Tribune, Selkirk Record and Express Weekly News before joining the paper in 2022. Read more about Tyler.
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