The families of two women and a teenage girl who were recently found dead after being reported missing in Metro Vancouver gathered on Saturday for an emotional vigil.
Natasha Harrison said of her daughter Tatyanna: “A life was taken from us.
Harrison reported her daughter missing on May 3. It turns out that the Richmond RCMP had found the 20-year-old’s remains on a boat anchored in the Fraser River a day earlier, but was not identified until first week of August.
According to her family, the coroner’s preliminary report indicated that Tatyanna died of fentanyl poisoning.
The girl’s mother said the RCMP considered the death not suspicious and closed the case – although Tatyanna’s body was discovered naked from the waist down.
“Well, you got her case unsealed under the rug. Tatyanna was worth a lot more than you were willing to give her and now the world no longer has her. We no longer have her in our lives. my life too,” Harrison said.
More than 100 people gathered at the Richmond marina where Tatyanna’s remains were located.
Family members of Noelle O’Soup, an Indigenous teenager found dead on Hastings Street SRO, and Chelsea Poorman, a young Indigenous woman whose body was found in the property of a mansion in the west, also spoke at the ceremony.
Josie August, a relative of O’Soup’s, said: “Don’t let this happen again. mall. She should be with her friends. She should be with her family.”
O’Soup was reported missing from her Port Coquitlam foster home in May 2021 and her remains were placed in May 2022.
On February 24, Vancouver police identified a man in his 40s as dead in the same room without a thorough search.
More than two months later, a team clearing the man’s possessions out of the apartment found the bodies of O’Soup and an unidentified woman.
The Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner has opened an investigation into an officer’s conduct with the Vancouver Police Department for alleged neglect of duty related to the case.
That investigation is currently on hold while a criminal investigation opens into the deaths of O’Soup and the other woman lying in the room.
Poorman had been missing for nearly two years before a contractor working at a Shaugnessy mansion found her body on the property.
Parts of her skull and some of her fingers were missing.
The VPD said it believed Poorman died the day she disappeared, or shortly thereafter, and that her remains had been exposed to the elements for 20 months.
Although the investigation is still open, police say there is not enough evidence to call Poorman’s death suspicious.
The three families speaking at the ceremony had more in common than grief – they also shared the belief that the police were not doing enough to find their missing daughter and did not thoroughly investigate the surrounding circumstances. their death.
“They are someone. They are someone’s daughter, they are someone’s granddaughter, they are loved,” said Chelsea’s mother, Sheila Poorman.
Despite the immense pain that comes with sharing the pain openly, the families of Harrison, Poorman and O’Soup did it so their loved ones would not be forgotten as they continued their search. answers about how and why, they died.
