Tina Fontaine, the Manitoba girl whose murder sparked renewed calls for a national inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women, encountered multiple first responders the day before she disappeared.
Details continue to emerge about the 15-year-old’s last known hours on Aug. 8, nine days before her body was found in a bag pulled from Winnipeg’s Red River. According to police and Fontaine’s family, Fontaine had contact with police officers, paramedics, hospital staff and a children’s aid worker shortly before she was reported missing for the final time.
Fontaine’s guardians say those first responders squandered multiple chances to save her life.
“She fell right through the cracks,” said Joseph Favel, Fontaine’s great-uncle.
Fontaine encountered two police officers during a roadside stop on Aug. 8, Winnipeg police have confirmed. Police say Fontaine was sitting in the passenger seat of a car and spoke to the officers. The driver of the car was intoxicated and taken into custody, but Fontaine was allowed to leave.
“They had her, they could have taken her,” Fontaine’s great-aunt, Thelma Favel, told CTV Winnipeg. “Why would you let a 15-year-old go when she was in a car with a man who was intoxicated?”
Police said the officers checked Fontaine’s identity and should have seen that she had been reported missing, but let her go anyway.
“If officers come across a person that’s reported missing, I would expect them to take that person into their care,” Supt. Danny Smyth said Thursday.
Winnipeg police say the officers’ conduct is under investigation.
Later that day, Fontaine was found passed out in an alleyway and taken by ambulance to hospital.
Her great-aunt recently learned of this hospital trip from a $500 ambulance bill the Favel family received in the mail.
“That’s supposed to be the ride to save her life,” Thelma Favel said.
The Favels say Fontaine was at the hospital for three or four hours before she was discharged into the custody of an aid worker with Winnipeg’s Children and Family Services.
The worker drove Fontaine to the CFS office and left her in the car so she could look up her address, the Favels say. When the CFS worker came back, Fontaine was gone.
Fontaine’s body was recovered from the Red River on Aug. 17. Her death triggered renewed debate over the relatively high number of cases of missing and murdered aboriginal women across the country. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has refused calls for a national inquiry into the matter.
With a report from CTV Winnipeg's Alesia Fieldberg
