A boy who had just celebrated his 14th birthday was among a group of youths who stabbed a stranger in the heart outside a West Alexander beer vendor and left him to die on the street.
The boy pleaded guilty to manslaughter Tuesday for the unprovoked Nov. 11, 2023 slaying of 27-year-old Peter Filip. He appeared at the Manitoba Youth Centre alongside his mother, stepfather and grandmother. Dressed in a black hoodie and ripped jeans, he sat quietly as Crown attorney Matt Armstrong laid out an agreed statement of facts for provincial court Judge Cynthia Devine.
Court heard the teen was hanging out with two friends at the Canad Inns Destination Centre on William Avenue around 1:30 a.m. on Remembrance Day when they were joined by four other boys whom the youth had never met.
The boy pleaded guilty to manslaughter Tuesday for the unprovoked Nov. 11, 2023 slaying of 27-year-old Peter Filip outside a West Alexander beer vendor.
Footage from surveillance cameras in the area showed the group walking toward Elgin Avenue and then to Logan Avenue, stopping near Lipstixx Experience Nightclub, a strip club and beer vendor at 1105 Arlington St.
Audio captured from cameras recorded one of the boys asking “Who we robbing?” before producing a knife from his waistband and passing it to another boy. Someone else in the group was carrying a sawed-off, .22 calibre rifle.
Shortly before 2 a.m., Filip arrived at the vendor on his bicycle.
Surveillance footage showed two of the boys approaching Filip and beginning the assault. Three others soon joined while the remaining two hung back — one of them using his cellphone to take photos of the attack, Armstrong said.
Filip attempted to flee but was knocked to the ground, stomped, beaten and struck with the gun.
The youth in court admitted to pushing and kicking the man.
A few minutes after the assault began, one of the boys stabbed Filip and the group fled.
The youth in court “found out after the attack that Mr. Filip had been stabbed, but did not know who caused the stab wound,” Armstrong said.
The boy did not speak during the proceedings, except to say “yes” when asked by his defence counsel to confirm his guilty plea.
When he stood to do so, his grandmother told him “Pull your pants up,” and gestured toward his jeans, which hung low enough to expose his underwear.
After fleeing from the scene, the boys were again captured on audio recordings discussing the attack, Armstrong said.
One person said “We just stabbed him,” while another said, “I got blood all over me.” Two of the suspects exchanged a high-five before somebody said, “You liked that s—t,” Armstrong said.
Filip was able to stand momentarily and stumble onto the street, where “he collapsed and never got back up,” Armstrong said.
A passing motorist stopped to help Filip after finding him on the ground.
“(The motorist) observed Mr. Filip was bleeding badly, was rolling around on the side of the road and he told (the motorist) he got jumped by a bunch of people. Mr. Filip then rolled onto his back and went unconscious.”
Filip’s cause of death was determined to be a single stab wound to the heart. He also suffered a laceration to the back of his head, a broken nose and abrasions to his face and body, court heard.
During a December interview with the Free Press, Filip’s mother, Coi Nguyen, said her son enjoyed travelling and had worked at various jobs in retail stores, restaurants and home renovations.
He was born in Winnipeg and moved to Mississippi to live with his mother and sister when he was a boy. He stayed there through his high school years, and in 2016 returned to Winnipeg, where his father lives.
“He was very much loved by everyone,” Nguyen said.
After the fatal attack, the young suspects allegedly robbed three kids at gunpoint and tried to shoot a driver during an attempted carjacking, the Winnipeg Police Service said previously.
Between Dec. 11 and 20, police arrested two 14-year-old boys, a 15-year-old boy and a 16-year-old boy. The remaining suspects were later linked to the crime.
Outside of court, defence attorney Emilie Cook confirmed the youth who pleaded guilty turned 14 two days before the slaying.
Devine accepted the guilty plea and a defence request to prepare a pre-sentencing Gladu report to assess the “impact that colonialism and residential schools” have had on the boy and his family.
That report is due Aug. 20, Devine said.
The defence is also seeking for the youth to serve his sentence under an Intensive Rehabilitative Custody and Supervision order. The IRCS program allows participants access to one-on-one counselling, occupational therapy, tutoring and other specialized services, at a cost of $100,000 a year.
Participants in the IRCS program must be guilty of a serious violent offence, suffer from a mental illness or disorder and have a treatment program that case workers believe will reduce the risk to the public.
The youth will need to undergo an assessment to determine whether he qualifies for the program before the court approves the order.
He left the court with his family and was not held in custody.
tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca
Tyler Searle
Reporter
Tyler Searle is a multimedia producer who writes for the Free Press’ city desk. Since joining the paper in 2022, he has found himself driving through blizzards, documenting protests and scouring the undersides of bridges for potential stories.
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