Dollarama investigating after video shows security dragging alleged shoplifter to back of Winnipeg store

WARNING: This story contains disturbing details.

A woman has been charged and Dollarama is investigating after security guards dragged a suspected shoplifter to the back of one of its Winnipeg stores earlier this week.

Dora Wood says she was at the Dollarama on Portage Avenue, near Donald Street in the city's downtown, around noon on Wednesday when she saw two security guards pinning a woman, who Wood said appeared to be Indigenous, to the ground inside the store.

"They were roughing her up," she told CBC on Saturday. "She was laying on the ground, helpless, and that guy had his knee on top of her [back], and she's a small lady."

Wood says she started recording the incident on her cellphone shortly after.

WATCH | Eyewitness video shows Dollarama security drag woman to back of store: 

At the start of the video, two men are seen pulling a woman, whose hands appear to be bound behind her back, down an aisle toward a room marked "employees only." The woman cries out that she does not want to be taken there and tries to get away, but the men hold onto her arms and pull her into the room.

"We already arrested you," a guard tells the woman, as he appears to drag her into the room.

Wood and another man yell at the security guards not to take the woman to an area further back in the room, as they record the incident on their cellphones. The man holds the door open as another person, who appears to be an employee, assures him that the woman will not be harmed.

"We have a licence, and we are justified to arrest people in the case of shoplifting," a security guard tells the man.

Wood begins to film through the crack of the open door, and the woman accused of shoplifting is seen continuing to scream and cry, saying she wants to be let go. The men who dragged her into the room hold her arms and restrain her as she thrashes. 

"I want to get out," she yells. "Leave me alone, let me go."

One employee urges her to calm down before Wood's video ends.

CBC has not been able to verify the identity of the woman in the video, but Wood says she was later told by a St. Theresa Point councillor that the woman is from that northern Manitoba First Nation.