Supporters of the Saskatoon woman who is accused of staging her disappearance and then fleeing to the U.S. say she should be brought home to Canada.
Dawn Walker, 48, and her son, age seven, were at the centre of an exhaustive, emotional search after they were reported missing from Saskatoon on July 24. They were found in Oregon City on Friday, and Walker has been detained in the U.S. since.
Walker is charged in the U.S. with aggravated identity theft, which, if convicted, would lead to a minimum prison sentence of two years. She has also been criminally charged with parental abduction and public mischief in Canada.
U.S. prosecutors allege that Walker faked her and her son’s deaths as part of an elaborate scheme that began several months ago and involved stolen identities, as well as a fraudulent bank account.
People defending Walker believe there is more to the story than meets the eye, and they want officials to bring her closer to home.
“I really support and hope that they will extradite her back to Canada so that she can face those charges here on her homeland,” Walker’s aunt, Marie-Anne Daywalker-Pelletier, said at a support rally in Regina Tuesday night.
Erica Beaudin, the executive director of Regina Treaty/Indian Services, encouraged others at the rally to amplify calls for extradition.
“Dawn felt that she had no other choice, but that is her story to tell,” Beaudin said. “But our story — as family, as friends, as colleagues, as women — is to stand and to say, ‘We want you safe and home here on your own treaty lands to tell your story.'”
FULL STORY: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/dawn-walker-extradition-calls-1.6547395
