7-day stretch of violence reveals extent of issues Saskatoon faces heading into summer 2024

Warning: this story contains disturbing details.

It was late afternoon on a Monday when the gut-stabbed teen collapsed on a bench in front of dozens of horrified onlookers at the corner of 21st Street and Second Avenue S.

In minutes, marked and unmarked police cruisers with flashing lights and whoop-whooping sirens descended on the busy downtown intersection, soon followed by ambulances and fire trucks.

Businesses nearby locked their doors.

By that evening, April 8, police had scoured video from surveillance cameras and arrested a 24-year-old suspect.

The man, described in court documents as having no fixed address, was charged with aggravated assault and breaching conditions related to an earlier assault.

Surveillance cameras that captured the incident revealed a confusing sequence that began with the 15-year-victim and a group of friends interacting with the accused in front of the Social Services building on Second Avenue.

People drifted to the corner in the immediate aftermath, drawn by the sirens bouncing off the downtown buildings. They passed others leaving the scene, eyes wide and holding their children close.

The common refrain from the knots of people: "What's happening?"

Don Meikle has an idea. He's the executive director of EGADZ, a street outreach group he joined back in 1993.

"I've seen this coming for a long time," he said in an interview.

"It's the perfect mixing pot of what can go wrong, what's gonna go wrong and what's gonna continue to get worse."

The stabbing that afternoon foreshadowed a violent week in Saskatoon. The violence was not just in the downtown, or core neighbourhoods.

There were two homicides, with the victims  — 24-year-old Melissa Duquette and 25-year-old Kade Lee — dying 12 hours apart. These were the seventh and eighth violent deaths in the city so far this year. There were 12 in all of 2023, and the single year record is 16 from 2019.