WARNING | This story contains graphic descriptions of a fatal stabbing:
A man accused of killing a Ukrainian newcomer two years ago in Winnipeg has pleaded not guilty to a stabbing police called senseless and unprovoked.
Ethan Gladu, 21, is charged with second-degree murder in the killing of Ivan Rubanik, 46, near the corner of Watt Street and Talbot Avenue on the morning of Dec. 20, 2023.
“The amount of blood — it was, like, deep red blood, curdling,” Remi Van Den Driessche, an officer called to the scene that day, testified Monday, the first day of Gladu’s trial.
Gladu pleaded not guilty on Monday at his trial before Manitoba Court of King’s Bench Justice Kenneth Champagne in Winnipeg.
Rubanik’s wife, accompanied by a translator and seated in the gallery, held a tissue near her face at times during Van Den Driessche’s testimony.
Rubanik, a newcomer who fled war-torn Ukraine, was on his way to work when he was stabbed. A co-worker told CBC News at the time that Rubanik had been in Winnipeg for less than a year before the attack, arriving with his wife and two children.
Emily Dyck, 39, who works for Manitoba Corrections as a training officer, was the first witness called by Crown attorneys Lee Turner and Patrick Benjamin.
Dyck, who was driving her son to daycare on the morning of Dec. 20, said shortly before 8 a.m., she stopped on the north side of Watt, facing south, at a red light at Talbot.
She saw a man gesture to his upper chest area and fall to the ground near the sidewalk, she testified. She didn’t see anyone near him.
“He then dropped directly to his knees and folded forward,” Dyck testified.
She also saw “two or three individuals” near a bus stop south of the intersection. One was a young man with a backpack who was walking.
Dyck circled back and honked her horn twice when she got near the man on the ground, but he didn’t respond, she said. She parked in a parking lot off Watt, about 25 feet from Rubanik, and called 911.
Dyck and a man who’d also pulled over approached the man on the ground, and the other bystander told her, “There’s a lot of blood. You don’t want to see this,” she told court.
The fire department arrived about five minutes after Dyck called 911.
“You didn’t see anybody chase anybody … run away from the area?” defence lawyer Tara Walker asked Dyck. She said no. Tara Walker and Kaitlynd Walker are Gladu’s defence lawyers.
Dyck could not describe the two or three people she’d seen in detail, saying only that “everybody was in parkas.”
Van Den Driessche, a 20-year member of the Winnipeg police service who testified next, said he went to the scene shortly after 8 a.m. in response to reports of a stabbing.
Van Den Driessche saw a “large amount of blood” when he arrived, with the snow stained a “reddish tinge” and the victim already in an ambulance.
He and his partner taped off the scene while several first responders at the ambulance provided emergency care to Rubanik.
“They were working on him hard. They were doing chest compressions,” Van Den Driessche said.
Van Den Driessche radioed police dispatchers, saying the victim was unstable and might not make it.
“The one paramedic … just said there was a small laceration between the collarbone and neck on the left side,” he said. “His clothes were just drenched.”
Rubanik was taken to hospital around 8:30 a.m. and pronounced dead at 8:54 a.m., said Van Den Driessche, who followed the ambulance to the hospital.
A cellphone “covered in blood” and a backpack with a duotang inside that had English language materials were among the items on Rubanik.
Sgt. James Sushnyk, a 21-year member of the force, was a shift supervisor that day.
Court heard he directed the closure of Talbot and Watt to traffic and called in supports to scan the area, including officer Chad Black.
Black contacted Winnipeg Transit, asking for footage from buses in the area around 7:45 a.m. and 8:20 a.m. By 9:30, a transit employee reported dropping off a male in the area of Watt and Talbot who was talking about stabbing someone, Black told court.
Black said footage from transit, taken around 7:45 a.m., showed a man told the driver to pull over, then said, “You want to get stabbed now? Fuck … I’ll stab you,” court heard.
Investigators also obtained footage from a homeowner on Talbot showing a man running in the area around 7:43 a.m., Sushnyk said.
Tips suggested a few suites of interest at a residential complex at 450 Talbot, he said.
People there, along with the photos and transit report, prompted investigators to identify Gladu as a suspect, Sushnyk said.
The trial will continue Tuesday, with footage from transit surveillance expected to be played in court.