After Three Unexplained Deaths, Indigenous Families Fight for Answers

[Editor’s note: This article contains descriptions of sexual assault and stories related to missing and deceased Indigenous women and youth. It may be triggering to some readers.]

It’s been three years since the deaths of Tatyanna Harrison, Noelle O’Soup and Chelsea Poorman.

But their families are no closer to any answers to explain how three young Indigenous people died in the Metro Vancouver area.

And in the case of Harrison, family members have discovered disturbing information that calls into question previous findings by the BC Coroners Service.

On Red Dress Day Monday, advocates and family members gathered to call for a coroner’s inquest into the deaths of the three women.

“If you were to help someone hide a crime, that in itself would be a crime,” Harrison’s mother, Natasha, told reporters during a press conference. “So I don’t know what happens when our justice system does it.”

An emailed statement attributed to Solicitor General Garry Begg said his office had received the request for a coroner’s inquest and is “looking into” it.

“Families expect that everyone involved in investigations like these works hard to get justice for those who died too soon,” the statement said. “It’s crucial that we can trust the integrity and actions of the officers doing these heartbreaking investigations.”

The remains of Harrison, O’Soup and Poorman were found over a six-month period in 2022. All three were young and Indigenous and had a connection to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The police do not consider Poorman’s death or Harrison’s death suspicious.

O’Soup went missing on May 12, 2021, when they were 13, after leaving a foster care group home in Coquitlam. Their body was found in 2022 in a single-room occupancy hotel, in the room of a man with a history of inviting young women there to use drugs. On at least one other occasion, he had sexually assaulted a woman. Another woman had previously been found dead of an apparent overdose in his room.

Poorman, 24, went missing from downtown Vancouver on Sept. 6, 2020, and her family frequently spoke to local media about their search for her and their frustrations with the police investigation. On April 22, 2022, her remains were found in the backyard of a vacant home in Shaughnessy, one of Vancouver’s wealthiest neighbourhoods. Even though Poorman’s skull was missing from the rest of her remains, police quickly concluded her death was not suspicious.

Harrison, 20, was last seen in the Downtown Eastside on April 22, 2022. Her body was found in a boat in dry dock at a marina in Richmond just two weeks later, but was not identified until Aug. 5.

Coroner Cynthia Hogan initially told Natasha Harrison that Tatyanna had almost certainly died of fentanyl toxicity.

But months later Harrison learned that following an autopsy, a pathologist had determined the cause of death was sepsis — a form of blood infection.

Despite Tatyanna’s body being found naked from the waist down, a rape kit test was not performed.

Harrison pushed police to complete a rape kit test, but the sexual assault evidence has not yet been processed by the RCMP, she said Monday.

The Tyee contacted the RCMP for comment for this story, but the force said it does not comment on open investigations.

Harrison and Justice for Girls, an advocacy organization, revealed Monday that an independent pathologist who reviewed the evidence and autopsy report rejected the BC Coroners Service finding that sepsis was the cause of Tatyanna’s death.

The cause of death should have been ruled undetermined, the independent review found.

“The list of questions surrounding her case are endless, as are the questions in Noelle and Chelsea’s cases,” Sue Brown, staff lawyer for Justice for Girls, told reporters.

“The role of the coroner is essential to the administration of justice, and the public must be able to put faith in their investigations and findings. This latest information seriously calls our ability to do that into question.”

Brown said a coroner’s inquest into all three of the cases is now required to find answers for the families and restore public confidence in the BC Coroners Service and police.

Dr. Matthew Orde is the forensic pathologist who reviewed the coroners service photographs, autopsy report and toxicology report for Tatyanna Harrison.

In a statement, he told The Tyee that factors like “acute mixed drug toxicity” and seizure disorder could have caused or contributed to her death, “although the levels of drugs which were detected were in fact rather low.”

He said that based on the information available to him, he would classify her death as “undetermined.”

“The autopsy pathologist's and the coroner’s opinion that Tatyanna’s death is likely explained by sepsis (systemic infection) is thought not to be supported by the available evidence,” he wrote to The Tyee.

The Tyee has previously reported on concerns raised by Orde and other pathologists about the overall quality of work being done by the BC Coroners Service. Coroners in the province are not required to have medical training.

Poorman’s and O’Soup’s families are also still waiting for information that could shed light on the deaths of their loved ones.

O’Soup’s relative and family advocate, Josie August, told The Tyee the family has still not been able to get information from the Ministry of Children and Family Development. They don’t even have any details about the group home Noelle had been living in when they went missing.

“We have yet to hear any accountability or any words from the social worker,” August said.

Brown and Sheila Poorman, Chelsea’s mother, have attempted to get all documents related to the Vancouver Police Department’s investigation of Chelsea’s disappearance and death through a freedom of information request. But they have been denied because the VPD’s investigation is still open.

The Tyee tried to obtain an external RCMP review that examined how the force investigated the case, but Vancouver police said the document can’t be made public because it could compromise an open investigation.

Police media spokesperson Steve Addison told The Tyee police are keeping Poorman’s case open because “we still hope that one day we will be able to provide answers that can explain how Chelsea travelled from the place where she was last seen to the place where her remains were found.”

Addison confirmed the case is not being treated as a criminal investigation.

Brown said if that is the case there should be nothing stopping police from releasing information about their investigation to advocates and the families, since there is no potential criminal prosecution to endanger.

“What that leads us to is questions about ‘How do we get more answers for the families?’ Because they deserve answers, and they deserve to know what the quality of the investigation was and what the police know about the circumstances under which Chelsea, Noelle and Tatyanna died,” Brown said.

“Unfortunately, there's not really any way to compel [police], and I think we are hoping that with the coroner's inquest... then we can ask those questions, and we can learn more about what is known about the deaths and circumstances under which they died.”