An alleged weekend assault is now a homicide investigation.
Jimmy Robert Monias, 21, was sent to hospital around 6 p.m. Saturday in critical condition after receiving a head injury. He had been drinking with Kyle Ivan Rae, 22, at Rae’s Limbrick Complex residence.
Rae was originally charged with aggravated assault in the incident. But Monias died at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre around 7:30 p.m. Sunday.
Angel Wark is a neighour, whose residence is across the courtyard from where the victim lived. She said she was home with her four children doing laundry and cleaning the yard on Saturday when the police arrived.
"Then I saw the ambulance rushing the boy to the hospital. We stood outside to see what was going on and I saw more (police) cruisers coming in here," Wark said, surprised Monias ultimately succumbed to his injuries.
"I was reading the article on the Internet because I wasn't sure exactly what happened, because I saw the police officer put a girl in the police car. She was (allegedly) intoxicated and I saw two police officers taking (her) kids out of the house. The girl who lives in there has two small children. I don't know her personally, she just moved in here not too long ago."
Wark has lived in the low-income, socially assisted housing complex for about eight years, where graffiti has been half-heartedly scrubbed from the walls of the tenament-style homes, and where the words death and die are scribbled on the window of one residence. She said she no longer feels safe there, even though the incident occurred between people who were familiar to one another.
"I've seen too much lately, and I've seen a lot of things happen around here. I don't feel safe and I don't feel safe for my children either," Wark said.
"There's a lot of alcohol issues in here. People drink every night. The police are called here all the time. It seems like it's non-stop in this area. I think it's because most of us are on social assistance and some of us can't find jobs and I think (people) target this area because it used to be called the projects.
"For me it's just a place to live for my kids and I try to make it safe and everything else," she said.
Police say the charge to Rae, who remains in custody at the Thunder Bay District Jail, will be upgraded, likely on Tuesday, when he's scheduled to appear in court.
“This is one of those unfortunate situations where an assault with injuries then leads to death and at that point investigators have to look at what is appropriate (for a charge),” police spokesman Chris Adams said Monday morning. “They look at a number of factors primarily what are the facts that led up to the injury.”
Adams couldn’t say how the injury to Monias happened, though he did say police are quite certain of how Monias died.
“I can’t comment on the exact nature of how the injury occurred because that will be evidence that will be part of the court case and there still is a postmortem investigation that needs to be conducted as well,” Adams said.
Monias’s body will be transported to Toronto on Monday for the postmortem.
