About Us
Order
Contact
Excerpts
Photos
Reviews

Home
 

Inquiry into Saskatoon Teenager's Death Comes to an End
By Frank Larue

Crime SceneThe 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.

ambulanceThe 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.

Neil StonechildThe 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...