‘We want justice’: Families of B.C. victims of unsolved homicides rally for change

Families who have lost loved ones to violent crime gathered on the steps of a B.C. courthouse to demand answers and accountability.

SURREY, B.C. — Families of victims in unsolved homicide investigations rallied outside a Surrey, B.C., courthouse Monday to demand answers.

Among them was organizer Christine Angelis, whose daughter, 31-year-old Kiesha Garie, was found dead in a car with her fiancé, 30-year-old Umair Kasim, in Burnaby in October 2022. The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT) took conduct of the investigation, but no charges have been laid.

“We’re getting told over and over to just wait, and wait, and wait, and nobody is helping us,” Angelis told CTV News. “This has destroyed me, this has destroyed my life. I had my daughter when I was 17, she was my everything, the joy of our family.”

The rally also included relatives of Dillen Bain, a Kamloops man whose disappearance was deemed suspicious by police earlier this month, and the family of 26-year-old Devon Goodrick, who was last seen in Surrey four years ago. IHIT is leading that investigation, but no charges have been laid.

“Families don’t get enough information as to why prosecutions aren’t going through,” said Surrey-Cloverdale MLA Elenore Sturko.

Sturko said that unlike most other provinces, where the charge assessment threshold is a “reasonable likelihood of conviction,” in B.C. it is a “substantial likelihood.”

“We need the government to listen to these families who have been denied justice, who have been told by police that there are reasonable grounds to go ahead with charges and that the government hasn’t done that,” she said.

To protect the integrity of the investigation, Angelis did not want to comment on whether that was the situation in her daughter’s case, but said both police and the B.C. Prosecution Service need to do more.

“They should be protecting the victims, but instead they’re protecting the perpetrators,” she said.

CTV News reached out to IHIT about the status of the Garie and Kasim investigation but has not heard back.