Winnipeg senior robbed and beaten on walk home from bingo
A Winnipeg senior is recovering after he was beaten and robbed on his way home from bingo Wednesday evening.
Alvin Spence, 67, had taken the bus from the Freight House Recreation Centre on Isabel Street to Portage Avenue after bingo at around 10 p.m. He got off the bus to walk to his home on Good Street.
Spence said as he turned down the back lane behind Good Street and St. Mary Avenue — minutes from his home — he was approached by three men.
"I had my hood over [my head] because it was kind of cold. Then that's when I heard these footsteps — somebody coming, running behind — and I looked but the guy made it looked like he passed me. And then I looked behind again and there's two more running," Spence told CBC News after he was released from hospital on Thursday.
His daughter, Sue Murdock, said the trio demanded her father's backpack.
"He heard footsteps running and then [the men] asked, 'What's in the bag?'" she said. "My dad said, 'Take my bag, you don't need to fight me.'"
Spence said the men knocked him down onto the back lane. When he got back up, they knocked him against a fence, grabbed his bag and fled.
He was able to make it back to his apartment and call his daughter, who called police and an ambulance and rushed over to see him.
"Half his face was puffy, his eye was shut, he has a big laceration under his eye," Murdock said, adding that there is blood splattered on the back lane in the snow and in his apartment building.
'Some people just have no heart'
Spence was treated in hospital and released on Thursday. However, he said he will have to undergo surgery on his face, which has been broken in several places.
"I am shaking my head in disbelief," Murdock said. "There is no respect for the elderly. Some people just have no heart."
Winnipeg police are investigating. Murdock said officers used a helicopter to track the suspects that night, but with no success.
Murdock said she wants the three men who attacked her father to know police are looking for them.
"It sickens me that someone could do this to an older person." she said. "I want them to feel just as nervous on the street as my father will now."
Spence said while the men made off with his backpack and some change in his pocket, they did not find his wallet or the $60 he had won at bingo.
