THUNDER BAY – Nishnawbe Aski Nation Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler is demanding to know why Thunder Bay Police did not issue a missing person’s notice after 17-year-old Tammy Keeash disappeared and was subsequently found dead in the Neebing-McIntyre Floodway.
Fiddler, reached by phone in Timmins, Ont., said alerting the public is one of the key recommendations made last June following a six-month inquest into the death of seven First Nation’s students in Thunder Bay between 2001 and 2011.
“We understand she went missing on Saturday and none of us really knew about it until we were told a body was found in Thunder Bay until yesterday. There was no official search that we knew of that happened to look for this young girl,” Fiddler said.
Police were alerted on Sunday night, at about 9 p.m. by passersby that a body was in the floodway. They had been told by children playing in the area about the body.
According to spokesman Chris Adams, Thunder Bay Police Service was contacted on Saturday night by Keeash’s group home guardian regarding a matter he said police cannot discuss.
“We were contacted a second time by the guardian on Sunday, May 8 at 1:28 p.m. to ask that we check the welfare of Tammy at a specific address,” Adams said.
“Tammy could not be located at that location. Tammy was then reported as missing at 2:23 p.m. to our service. At this point this became an active missing person investigation.”
Police did not issue a media release seeking the public’s assistance to locate the missing teen, a regular occurrence in other cases.
It's got Fiddler baffled and upset.
“One of the top recommendations of the inquest was for the police and the community of Thunder Bay to establish and develop a protocol on missing youth in Thunder Bay,” said Fiddler, set to take part in NAN’s annual spring meeting.
“When a call is issued that a youth is missing, there should be certain things that kick in, in terms of the protocol. And we didn’t see that in this most recent case.”
Fiddler added the city has been slow to react on another recommendation, which would see increased patrols and better lighting installed in certain areas of the city where tragedy has struck in the past – or might in the future.
“So far that hasn’t happened,” Fiddler said.
Keeash, who grew up in the remote North Caribou First Nation, is the fourth Aboriginal teen to die in an Ontario group home since last October.
Kanina Sue Turtle, 15, was the first to die, on Oct. 29, 2016 in Sioux Lookout. Thirteen-year-old Amy Owen committed suicide on April 17 in Ottawa, while 16-year-old Courtney Scott was killed in a fire four days later in Orleans.
Fiddler on Tuesday said on Wednesday he plans to add Keeash's name to an inquest NAN leadership plans to call for surrounding the deaths of the other three girls.
"It's a tragic loss," he said.
