Vancouver advocates demand inquest for 3 MMIWG

Advocates in Vancouver are demanding answers and justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls on the national day of action and awareness.

A news conference Monday included the family members of 20-year-old Tatyanna Harrison, 24-year-old Chelsea Poorman, and 13-year-old Noelle O’Soup, as well as Grand Chief Stewart Phillip — president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) — and Sue Brown, the staff lawyer for advocacy group Justice for Girls.

Following a series of failures to properly investigate the nature of the three deaths, the group is calling on the provincial minister of public safety and solicitor general, Garry Begg, to direct a coroner’s inquest.

Justice for Girls says Harrison had been reported missing by her mother on May 3, 2022. The group says police had found her remains in Richmond a day before this, but it wasn’t until August 2022 that police were able to identify them. Her death had initially been reported to be related to drug toxicity, but the BC Coroners’ Service released a report in February 2023 saying she had died from sepsis. Her case is considered to be non-criminal in nature.

Brown says the group obtained an independent second review and opinion from a licensed forensic pathologist due to the remaining questions surrounding Tatyanna Harrison’s death.

She says the pathologist disagreed with the coroner’s findings.

“Furthermore, it is his opinion that the manner of her death should be ruled as undetermined and in contradiction to what the coroner found,” said Brown.

She adds that no rape kit was used during Harrison’s autopsy, “despite the fact that Tatyanna was found harshly naked.”

Poorman was visiting from Saskatchewan when she went missing in downtown Vancouver on Sept. 6, 2020, Justice for Girls says. Her remains were found on April 22, 2022, in an abandoned mansion in the city’s Shaughnessy neighbourhood. Police initially said her death was not suspicious, but the coroner said the state of her remains meant they were unable to determine the cause of death.

The advocacy group says O’Soup, a member of the Key First Nation, was in a foster care group home in Port Coquitlam when she was reported missing. No amber alert was issued, and child welfare authorities did not coordinate a search, it says. Her remains were found in an apartment building in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood in May 2022 — a year after she had been reported missing. Her cause of death is undetermined.

“The list of questions surrounding [Harrison’s] case is endless. As are the questions in Noelle and Chelsea’s cases. The list of failures is just as long,” said Brown.

She says an inquest will shed light on systemic failures and missteps by the Vancouver Police Department and the BC Coroner’s Service.

“We need to see quality and thorough investigations into every single death and disappearance of an Indigenous girl or woman in this province and in this country. And we need to see their deaths and their disappearances immediately treated as homicides and worked backwards from there, rather than seeing discriminatory stereotypes, judgments, and biases seeping into the quality of the investigations by the coroner, by the police, and by other authorities.”

Brown says a letter has been sent to Minister Begg Monday, marking the first time the pathologist’s findings have been disclosed.

—With files from Srushti Gangdev and Emma Crawford