Death of First Nations Teen Triggers Police Watchdog Investigation

B.C.’s police watchdog is reviewing the RCMP’s response following the death last December of a First Nations youth who had recently been reported missing in Smithers.

The announcement comes on the heels of a similar investigation in Vanderhoof, about 300 kilometres to the east. The communities both straddle northern B.C.’s Highway of Tears, a 700-kilometre stretch of road known for the high number of Indigenous women and girls who have been murdered or gone missing in the area.

In November, the Independent Investigations Office of BC, which looks into police involvement in incidents of death or serious harm, released a report that found RCMP officers in Vanderhoof could have done more to search for a 29-year-old Saik’uz First Nation woman who was reported missing, and later found dead, in 2023. There were not grounds for criminal charges, the IIO determined.

In late December, a month after the IIO concluded its Vanderhoof investigation, it launched the current investigation into the handling of the Smithers case. In a statement issued last week, the IIO said it is seeking witnesses who may have more information about what occurred the night the teenage girl disappeared.

Few details have been released about the incident.

The youth was last seen at about 7 p.m. on Dec. 26 on Main Street in Smithers just east of Highway 16. She was reported missing late that evening by staff at her residence after she didn’t return home, according to the IIO.

The girl’s body was discovered on a walking trail the following morning shortly after 10 a.m. The Tyee is not sharing her name out of respect for the family’s wishes.

News of the incident was met with grief and surprise in Smithers, home to about 5,300 people, where many learned about the death only when the IIO investigation was announced last week.

Denise Halfyard, the manager at Tears to Hope Society, an Indigenous-led organization that offers support to families whose loved ones have gone missing or died under suspicious circumstances, said the public should have been made aware earlier.

“To hear a month later that this girl was found deceased kind of blew me away,” Halfyard told The Tyee. “As Indigenous people, the first thing we think of is ‘If she wasn't Indigenous, would we have heard all over the news that this girl was missing? Would we have heard all over the news the next day that she was found deceased?’”

Smithers RCMP issued a news release on Dec. 28 that said officers had responded a day earlier to a report of a “sudden death on a trail near Ranger Park,” a wooded area about a kilometre east of Smithers’ downtown core. The statement added that RCMP wouldn’t release more details while the investigation was underway and that there was “no increased risk to public safety.”

Smithers RCMP spokesperson Const. Jocelyn Foidart said this week in an email to The Tyee that an investigation into the teen’s death is ongoing.

“At this time, we have nothing to indicate criminality,” Foidart said. “Investigators are working to establish a timeline of the young person’s movements after she was dropped off downtown by her care providers, so the family has a clear understanding of what happened.”

The Smithers IIO investigation follows a previous case that found RCMP in Vanderhoof could have done more to search for Chelsey Heron, who also went by the last name Quaw, after she disappeared from a home at the Saik’uz First Nation in October 2023.

At the time, community members said the disappearance was out of character and called for more support from the RCMP. After nearly four weeks of searching, Heron’s remains were found within a kilometre of the home where she was last seen.

The IIO launched an investigation into the RCMP’s response in December 2023. In a 10-page decision released Nov. 26, it found that both community members and police “took many steps” to locate Heron.

But it also found that officers initially decided not to call in a dog handler because the presence of volunteer searchers meant that “any scent trail for a dog would be compromised.”

Nearly a month after Heron was reported missing, a canine search team was deployed after a volunteer searching for Heron discovered some of her personal items. Heron was found 15 minutes later in “thick bush” just 700 metres from where she was last seen, according to the IIO report.

A pathologist later determined she had died of hypothermia. The question of whether Heron might have been found alive if a police dog had been deployed earlier “remains unanswered,” wrote IIO chief civilian director Jessica Berglund.

While RCMP officers followed provincial policing standards, an Indigenous woman who went missing “in an area where so many others have tragically disappeared” should have warranted exceptional efforts, Berglund said.

“Her disappearance was extremely concerning. [Heron] was vulnerable, and she needed to be located quickly,” she wrote.

“Despite the low chance of success in deploying a police dog for search purposes, this was still available for the RCMP,” she said. “There are times when standard police practice may not be enough and, in my view, when a vulnerable Indigenous woman goes missing in this province, exceptional efforts are warranted.”

Berglund added that such efforts are aligned with recommendations from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, or MMIWG.

A June 2006 Highway of Tears symposium resulted in 33 recommendations, including a call for an emergency readiness plan with a missing-person alert-and-response component. More recently, the national inquiry recommended police establish standardized response times for reports of missing Indigenous people.

Many recommendations remain outstanding. Nearly a decade after the MMIWG inquiry began, federal government reporting shows that just two out of 231 calls for action have been completed.

“It’s not moving fast enough,” said Halfyard, who is Wet’suwet’en, Tsimshian and Gitxsan and grew up in northern B.C. She currently lives in Ucluelet on the territory of the Nuu-chah-nulth people.

Halfyard’s cousin Tamara Chipman went missing from the Prince Rupert area in 2005. More than 20 years later, the family is still without answers, she said.

“Taking these missing-persons calls more seriously, I think, and truly helping is first and foremost,” she said. “In the north, in particular, it seems that we don't see much change. I can't speak for the RCMP as a whole, but in the north, they could still do with change.”

Smithers Mayor Gladys Atrill told The Tyee that while the community is anxious for details, the two ongoing investigations — one by the RCMP into the teen’s death and another by the IIO into the RCMP’s response — will take time.

“On the human side, it’s tragic, without knowing all the details,” Atrill said. “Until that comes out, there’s no benefit in presupposing. As frustrating as it is for folks, you just have to wait.”

Atrill added that she expects everyone involved will co-operate with investigators.

Smithers RCMP responded to community concerns in a recent Facebook post, saying it “has been a difficult and heartbreaking situation for many in our community.”

“Because there was prior police involvement, responsibility for the review of police actions related to this call for service was assigned to the Independent Investigations Office of BC,” it said.

“We waited to share further information about this tragedy until the IIO had issued their public release, to ensure the integrity of their independent review,” the statement said, adding that the Smithers RCMP investigation into the youth’s death will run concurrently with the IIO investigation.

“From the very beginning, our members have been in contact with the family and have remained in communication with them throughout,” it said.

The IIO is looking to speak with anyone who saw the youth on the evening of Dec. 26 — when she was last seen wearing a white puffy jacket and blue jeans and carrying a black purse — or the morning of Dec. 27. She was found wearing grey pyjama pants, a black shirt, a black sweater and western-style ankle boots, according to the IIO.