
Inquiry
into Saskatoon Teenager's Death Comes to an End
By Frank Larue
The
story told at the inquiry was that it was a Saturday night. Stonechild
was on the run from a youth detention centre and wanted a drink.
He traded a pair of leather gloves for a bottle of vodka.
Following a few hours
of drinking and playing cards at a party, the teenagers went to
look for Stonechild's former girlfriend who was babysitting at a
nearby apartment complex. Because they didn't know the apartment
number, they walked around trying buzzers at random. After a while,
Roy got cold and left. Stonechild eventually found the right number,
but his formergirlfriend wouldn't let him in because she could tell
that he was drunk. Her sister's boyfriend called the police and
Stonechild soon wandered off.
The
constables responded to the call at 11:51 p.m. the cruiser's computer
terminal indicated, "Drunk to be removed/Neil Stonechild/17
years old."
The constables testified
that they had no memory of searching for Stonechild because that
would have been routine. Dispatch logs showed they never found him.
The logs indicated he was "GOA" or Gone on Arrival. Stonechild
was found the next day.
The question of police
involvement in the death of Neil Stonechild caused a storm of outrage
in the province's aboriginal community in light of the other "starlight
tours" in which Saskatoon police regularly took troublemakers
out of the city to make them walk home.
But according to Jason
Roy, he was walking away from the apartment complex when the cruiser
stopped him. The officers asked his name and he gave them a false
identity. Roy testified he watched them type the name into their
data terminal and saw the time. It was 11:56. But no record exists
that can confirm Roy's assertion that he saw Stonechild in the backseat
of the cruiser.
The
most important item in that evening's chronology was the constables'
encounter with Bruce Genaille. Genaille testified that the two officers
had also stopped him, demanded to see his identification, and asked
if he had seen Stonechild. Lawyers for the constables argued that
the time the police ran his name on the computer database, 12:04
a.m., was when they questioned him.
In other words, the police were still looking for Stonechild and
Roy's assertion was untrue...
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