THUNDER BAY—The 30-year-old woman is identified in the report only as “E.F.” but Anna Betty Achneepineskum immediately knew she was reading about her niece, Marie Spence.E.F., the report said, was found by a dog walker on April 30, 2016 in a wooded area near a stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway that slices through Thunder Bay. She was lying on her back, her hands clutching a clump of grass and a small branch, with cigarette burns on both palms. Her pants were pulled down past her buttocks.The scene was detailed in an Ontario police watchdog report, released Wednesday, that examined the relationship between Thunder Bay police and Indigenous communities. An autopsy later revealed ethanol intoxication and hypothermia, but also head injuries and a fractured sternum, the report said. Yet in the end, foul play was ruled out by Thunder Bay police. Achneepineskum knew all of this already. But what she didn’t know until reading the report was that at least two witnesses had approached police on the first day of the investigation. One saw a man leaving the area shortly before Spence’s body was found; the other saw a man watching the crime scene while crouched behind a hill. The first witness was never interviewed in a formal, recorded format; the second was never interviewed at all. From beginning to end, the investigation into Spence’s death contained “several deficiencies,” the report concluded. The police’s work on this case fell “significantly short.”Read more: Thunder Bay police make arrest in Indigenous teen’s deathThese are the death probes police watchdog wants reopenedOpinion | Alvin Fiddler: Thunder Bay has three years to address its police racism problem“I started swearing,” Achneepineskum says. “I was like, I can’t believe this and I just think about all the other deaths.“That’s all I could think of — there are others. There are others.”Like ...
|
