IT WAS STILL LIGHT OUT when the attacks occurred. In just forty-five minutes, a slim, dark-haired man wearing a Jets jersey sexually assaulted three nurses and a teenager in and around Winnipeg’s largest hospital, the Health Sciences Centre (HSC), on July 2, according to police.

While officers searched for the suspect, hospital workers finished their shifts and walked back to their vehicles, unaware a predator was at large. Later, police would report that a third woman was assaulted that night in the area, by the same man. Staff didn’t learn what happened until the following day.

For HSC employees, these assaults weren’t an aberration. They were a tipping point after years of increasing violence against hospital staff. In a 2024 survey, one-third of physicians at HSC reported experiencing an average of eleven safety episodes in the previous year, almost double the provincial rate. A safety episode can include threats, violence, sexual assault, and harassment. HSC alone accounted for nearly half of all reported assaults on Manitoba doctors. Physicians described being punched, kicked, spat on, and bombarded with verbal abuse. The danger follows them outside the hospital into walkways and parking lots, where some have been chased and attacked coming to and from the job.