The loved ones of a father who was randomly slain downtown last week are struggling to make sense of it as they mourn the loss of a man who was trying to turn his life around for his family and community.
Ricky Mancheese and his wife, Shirley, were on their way to pick up their 12-year-old son, Quentin, from school at lunchtime on June 11. They were near Kennedy Street by Sargent Avenue when Mancheese was attacked by a man with a knife.
“It was such a quick moment … they didn’t know each other at all,” Nadia Mancheese, the victim’s sister, told the Free Press.
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Ricky Mancheese was attacked downtown by a man with a knife last week.
Mancheese said her brother and the accused had been involved in a dispute in the morning in which they “had a few words,” but there was no physical altercation.
“The guy went home… then they saw him again and that’s when everything happened,” she said, relaying information from her sister-in-law who had witnessed the crime.
“I wish that person that did that to my brother realizes that he took someone special away from us.”
Matthew Gerald Tomack Pelletier, 36, was arrested one day later and charged with second-degree murder. Winnipeg police ask anyone with information about the killing to call detectives at 204-986-6508 or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 204-786-8477.
Mancheese was one week away from finishing Grade 10 and earning enough high school credits to enter the workforce as a security guard.
The “gentle giant” and “caring leader” saw the increased crime in his central Winnipeg neighbourhood — the same area where he was slain — and used it as an opportunity to better himself for the whole community, his sister said.
“He had a lot of encouragement to give and was a protector,” Mancheese said.
A Winnipeg Police Service annual statistical report, released Tuesday, shows violent crime in 2023 increased 12 per cent from a year earlier. Crime in Mancheese’s home neighbourhood of Central Park decreased overall by 28 per cent, the report shows.
Nadia Mancheese said the accused isn’t known in the tight-knit neighbourhood.
“I don’t know if it’s drug use or what’s going on… (Ricky) lost a lot of friends and wanted to make a change,” she said.
Family and friends will gather at the Eternal Grace funeral home to remember the man who was “always helping and caring about everybody,” as described by his adult education teacher.
Luanne Karn, Mancheese’s English teacher at Adult Learning on Lombard, started a GoFundMe campaign to help with funeral expenses and support for Mancheese’s wife and son.
“When there is this kind of tragic loss, you need a lot of things and a lot of people around you,” Karn said. “It’s what Ricky would want, his community to come together to support them.”
The campaign had raised more than $2,000 as of Tuesday afternoon.
nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca
Nicole Buffie
Multimedia producer
Nicole Buffie is a multimedia producer who reports for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom in 2023. Read more about Nicole.
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