Man wearing onesie breaks into Steinbach businesses

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This article was published 13/03/2024 (507 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A man wearing a onesie who broke into two Steinbach businesses and a church entered a guilty plea on March 1 in Steinbach provincial court.

Jason Quirk, 50, pleaded guilty to three counts of breaking and entering for incidents that happened on May 30, 2023 and Oct. 14, 2023.

In May at about midnight, RCMP received a call about a break in at Arctic Board Games and Puzzlers Escape Rooms. When police arrived on the scene they found the door to Arctic Board Games smashed, games strewn across the floor, and that the fire extinguisher had been used. When police looked at video surveillance they saw Quirk wearing what appeared to be a bunny onesie with crocs damaging the store and stealing. Artic assesses the damages to its business as totaling more than $4,000.

That same night, Quirk broke into Puzzlers stealing a Samsung tablet worth $200 and creating damages totaling $50. Police arrested Quirk on June 12, 2023.

Then on Oct. 14, 2023, at about 1 p.m., Quirk broke into St. Paul’s Lutheran Church where he damaged the inside of the church including overturning desks. As police responded to the alarm and were making a perimeter, Quirk was exiting the church carrying a TV and had in his pockets capsules of creamer which he stole from the church’s kitchen. Officers arrested him for the second time.

Quirk has a history of breaking and entering. At the time of his arrest in June 2023 he had previously broken into another location and was on probation for that breaking and entering. His criminal behaviour is due to a drug addiction, which he fuels with the items he steals from businesses and other locations. The Crown said at the time of the May and October break-ins Quirk’s actions and the intensity in which he committed the crimes was escalating.

Quirk first started using drugs when he was about 14 years old. He had tried to get clean several times by using methadone. While in jail for seven months, Quirk became sober without the use of methadone through the Winding Rivers program. He spoke to the judge and told him he would “do better.”

The judge sentenced Quirk to time served (as Quirk had already spent seven months in jail), one year supervised probation, one year unsupervised probation, and to not attend the Arctic, Puzzlers, or St. Paul’s.