Police seek man wanted on murder charge
Victim is city’s 7th homicide of year
A 22-year-old man is wanted by Saskatoon police on a charge of second-degree murder in the city ’s seventh homicide of 2018.
Investigators believe Duran Laplante, 22, was involved in an altercation with a 24-year-old man in a downtown apartment on Friday night, Saskatoon police said Thursday in a news release. Patrol officers, along with Medavie Health Services, responded around 10:40 p.m. to Marquis Towers in the 200 block of Fifth Avenue North, where they found the injured man in the hallway.
He was taken to hospital, where he died of his injuries.
Laplante and the deceased were known to each other, police said, adding they would not release the name of the deceased at the request of his family.
The investigation into the homicide is ongoing.
The death was followed hours later by the city’s eighth homicide of the year. On Saturday shortly before 11 a.m., officers and paramedics arrived at an apartment complex in the 200 block of Avenue V South, where they found an injured 23-year-old man.
He was taken to hospital, where he also died of his injuries. Police said they were able to determine his identity after releasing a description on Saturday describing him as slim, with short, dirty blond hair, blue eyes, protruding teeth and wearing a Nazareth ’95 World Tour T-shirt. Police also withheld his name.
The major crimes and forensic identification units are working with the coroner’s office on the investigation.
Saskatoon has already surpassed the five homicides recorded last year and is on track to pass the 10 recorded in 2016 — the most in a calendar year this century.