The family of Noelle O’Soup, a 14-year-old Indigenous girl whose remains were found in a Vancouver apartment in May, says B.C.’s Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) and the Vancouver Police Department neglected the teen before and after her death, failing to properly inform them when she disappeared and when her remains were ultimately identified.
O’Soup and her three brothers, who belong to the Key First Nation in Saskatchewan and the Saulteau First Nations in B.C., had been living in group homes run by the ministry for over 10 years, since she was removed from her mother’s care as a young child.
But her uncle, Cody Munch, had been regularly travelling from Fort St. John to Vancouver to build a relationship with the siblings and was in discussions with the MCFD to move O’Soup out of care and into his family home.
“That kid would have been so much better off with us,” said Munch, speaking from Fort St. John.
“One of the things that I don’t understand is what went on in that group home. We wanted to ask questions about everything that happened leading up to her death and all, and [MCFD] didn’t want to talk about any of that.”
O’Soup ran away from a group home in Port Coquitlam on May 12, 2021. On May 1, 2022, her remains were found in an apartment building at 405 Heatley Avenue, along with the remains of an unidentified woman and the apartment’s tenant, a man in his early 40s.
While the deaths of O’Soup and the unidentified woman are being investigated by the VPD’s Major Crime Unit, the man’s death is not being treated as suspicious. And while the man’s body was found in February, the other two were not discovered until early May. It’s believed O’Soup and the unidentified women died prior to the male tenant.
The coroner is still investigating a cause of death.
A Vancouver police officer is currently under investigation for neglect of duty for failing to find the two bodies during a search of the small apartment.
Full Story: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/noelle-osoup-family-1.6546297
