Coroner Announces Inquest for Tatyanna Harrison

B.C.’s chief coroner says the investigation into the death of Tatyanna Harrison will be reopened and an inquest held, three years after the discovery of her half-naked body on a boat in a Richmond marina.

The announcement comes one day after the families of Harrison, Chelsea Poorman and Noelle O’Soup called for coroner’s inquests into all three cases. The young Indigenous people’s bodies were discovered in Vancouver over six months in 2022.

“As a parent, I cannot fathom the trauma and grief that the Harrison family has experienced over the past three years,” Jatinder Baidwan said in a statement. “The pain of losing a child is unimaginable, and the concerns the Harrisons have expressed regarding the circumstances of Tatyanna's death only adds to that pain.”

The three deaths of people who went missing in the Vancouver area from 2020 to 2022 are not outwardly connected, but all had a connection to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside neighbourhood.

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 two weeks later.

Poorman, 24, was last seen in downtown Vancouver on Sept. 6, 2020. Her body was found in the backyard of an empty home in the upscale neighbourhood of Shaughnessy 18 months later.

O’Soup was just 13 when they were reported missing from a Coquitlam foster care group home in 2021. Their remains were later found in the single-room occupancy hotel room of a man known to prey on vulnerable young women.

Baidwan said inquests are not yet planned for Poorman and O’Soup because the coroner investigations into those deaths are still open.

Sue Brown, a staff lawyer for Justice for Girls who is working with the Poorman, Harrison and O’Soup families to ensure coroner’s inquests in all three of the cases, told The Tyee she’s happy with how quickly the chief coroner and B.C. Solicitor General Garry Begg responded to the Harrison family’s call for an inquest.

But Brown said she was taken aback to learn the coroner’s investigations into Poorman’s and O’Soup’s deaths are still open after three years.

At a press conference on Monday, Harrison’s mother, Natasha, said the coroner initially told her that Tatyanna had almost certainly died of a fentanyl overdose. But six months later, after an autopsy, she was told the cause of death was sepsis.

However, an independent pathologist who reviewed those findings says there is not enough evidence to say for sure what the cause of death was.

Natasha Harrison said her faith in the BC Coroners Service has been shaken.

Brown said it’s clear that all three cases warrant coroner’s inquests.

“In both Chelsea and Noelle’s cases, their remains had been there for a long time, which means that a lot of the physical evidence that would usually be relied upon to assess cause and manner of death weren’t available,” Brown said.

O’Soup was a 13-year-old child in care of the Ministry of Children and Family Development and “there was evidence she was in the presence of a known predator,” Brown said. “By that very fact alone, given she was in the care of MCFD, those facts alone to me merit an inquest.”

Brown said B.C.’s historic and “unique” problem of police not adequately investigating the deaths of Indigenous women and girls is also a pressing reason to hold an inquest into all three cases.

Harrison’s and Poorman’s cases are both considered to be not suspicious by police. However, Poorman’s case is being kept open by police — and that has stymied Brown’s efforts to obtain more information on the Vancouver Police Department’s investigation.

“I don’t think it’s justified to conclude that her case wasn’t criminal, and if the VPD wants to continue to assert that, they need to open their files up and they need to be transparent about the thoroughness of their investigation and the facts they’re relying on to come to that conclusion,” Brown said.

Brown said that coroner’s investigations can take place during active police investigations. The presiding coroner can impose publication bans, or the attorney general can intervene, to protect the integrity of future criminal prosecutions.