A quiet southeastern Saskatchewan community is reeling after the stabbing death of a young man in a bar Friday night.
“That’s all people are talking about right now — how this could actually happen in our town,” Sid Criddle, the mayor of Broadview, Sask., said Sunday.
Broadview, about 150 kilometres east of Regina, is a town of about 610 people.
RCMP in the community said that at 11:30 p.m. Friday, they were called to the town’s local watering hole, the Broadview Hotel, amid reports of a brawl in progress.
Criddle said he’s heard an argument got out of hand, leading to the stabbing.
When police and emergency medical crews arrived, they found an 18-year-old man bleeding and unresponsive on the bar's floor. Efforts to revive him were unsuccessful.
Criddle said he’s surprised such a serious incident would happen given the close proximity of police. The RCMP have a community detachment in Broadview.
“You’d think that would be a deterrent for issues like this. But obviously not,” he said.
Police have not made public the identity of the stabbing victim. Police said no arrests have been made as they continue to sort out what happened in the bar.
The victim was from a nearby town, Criddle said, adding that the others involved in the brawl were also from outside Broadview.
Criddle called Friday night's events “pretty overwhelming,” and said the town council will be discussing ways to prevent similar problems at a Wednesday meeting.
“We’ll certainly be looking at ways to prevent such things from happening in the future, of course,” the recently re-elected mayor said.
“In my term of office … I’ve never experienced anything like this.”
He offered condolences to the victim’s family on behalf of the entire Broadview community. An autopsy is scheduled for early this week.
Patron may not have been underage
There’s been no explanation of why the 18-year-old was allowed to be in the bar. In Saskatchewan, the legal age for drinking or being in an establishment that primarily serves alcohol is 19.
However, some townspeople told CBC News that they knew the dead man and believed he may have been older than the age reported by police.
Another man at the bar also suffered what police described as "severe lacerations to his face."
That man, 20, was rushed to the local Broadview hospital. Police said he was treated and later released.
Forensic investigators from Yorkton, Sask., have been called in to assist with the local police homicide investigation.
