Charlottetown Police plan to meet with family of an Aboriginal woman from P.E.I. to discuss the woman’s 1977 death on the city’s waterfront.’’
“We will meet them when they are ready…we’ll have to look and hear what they have to say,’’ says Deputy Chief Brad MacConnell.
Barbara Bernard and her grand-daughter spoke before the National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Wednesday in Moncton, N.B. about the life and death of Mary Francis Paul.
They say they know few details about Paul’s death and want to know if police investigated.
Bernard said her mother, who was from Scotchfort, had an alcohol problem and was a heavy drinker when she went out with friends, but always returned home and cared for her family.
She told the inquiry she noticed her mother was fidgety one night before going out and then never returned. Bernard said she learned days later her mother had been found dead near the water, but was only told that she had fallen and had a broken neck.
Bernard said she was only 16 years old at the time, and police never gave her any details.
She only discovered 12 years later that the death may have been suspicious, and the body had been in a metal bin, but says she never learned more from police.
MacConnell told The Guardian Friday that the family of Paul requested earlier this week through Victim Services to have a conversation with the Charlottetown Police Services.
He says the death was not deemed suspicious at the time.
He adds there would have been a file on the death, but the file has since been purged.
MacConnell says there is no police record of the incident other than the recollection of the officer who responded to the death.
The deputy chief spoke earlier this week to that officer, who is retired.
“The officer is willing to meet and share his memory of the incident and help provide some answers and closure to the mother’s death,’’ says MacConnell.
“Forty years ago, and even today,’’ he adds, “if a death is not deemed suspicious at the time there is no starting point for the police to investigate it.’’
