Police told Winnipeg family their loved one was killed — but he showed up alive 8 days later
CBC
A Winnipeg family is still reeling after they were told their loved one was the victim of a homicide — only to have him show up alive eight days later.
Judy Panchenko and her long-time partner Cheryl Cook were sitting at home when Winnipeg police officers came to their door and said their grandson, Peter Panchenko, was dead.
"We asked 'Is this about Peter?' and then [the officer] said 'He's been killed. He's dead,'" Cook said. "In the space of a few minutes we realized that Peter is not just dead but he's been murdered. He was stabbed, murdered, set on fire."
Police told Judy that Peter's body was found on April 27 by emergency crews called to deal with a fire in the area of MacDonald Avenue and Gomez Street in Point Douglas.
But officers didn't arrive at their house until May 18.
"The first thing is you're in shock," Judy said. "I said it's not Peter. As soon as they told me where it was, I said that is not Peter. Peter will never go downtown."
Judy said she and Cook they told police they had Facebook messages from her 35-year-old grandson that were sent on May 8 — more than a week after the incident had occurred. They again told police it could not be Peter.
But the two said police were adamant and said the medical examiner had used dental records to confirm his identity.
They said they were told to contact Peter's father to get a DNA sample to use as a secondary confirmation, which would take four to six weeks, but that police were certain it was their grandson.
"We said are you sure this is him. They said 99.9 per cent," Cook said.
Over the course of the next week, they started calling family and friends to let them know what happened.
"I went to his Facebook and posted on there and less than 10 minutes after posting … his friends were saying sorry for your loss," Peter's dad Shane Munroe said.
Sympathy cards started to pour in and the family began planning his funeral and picking out an urn.
But eight days after police told them Peter had been murdered, an alert on Munroe's cellphone from his door bell camera went off.
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