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A Canadian man has been found not guilty in the death of indigenous schoolgirl Tina Fontaine.
Raymond Cormier, 56, was charged with second-degree murder in the death of the 15-year-old in 2015.
Ms Fontaine's body was pulled from Winnipeg's Red River on 17 August 2014, a week after she was reported missing.
Her death has renewed calls from activists to launch an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Canada.
On Thursday, the 11-person jury found Mr Cormier not guilty, after a day of deliberations.
Moments after the verdict was read, the hashtag #justicefortinafontaine began to trend online.
Skip Twitter post by @farrah_khan Courage and heart today to Tina Fontaine and her community. She deserved to be safe, protected and cared for. This verdict is not okay. This is systemic violence #JusticeforTinaFontaine — Farrah Khan (@farrah_khan) February 22, 2018 Report
A forensic pathologist testified during the trial that it was not possible to determine how Ms Fontaine died.
No DNA linked Mr Cormier to the murder.
He was arrested in December 2015 following a lengthy undercover sting operation by police.
The Crown's case relied heavily on audio recorded by police of Mr Cormier during that operation. Various witnesses testified that Ms Fontaine and Mr Cormier were acquaintances.
She was raised by her great aunt, Thelma Favel, on the Sagkeeng First Nation, north-east of Winnipeg. She left her home to visit her biological mother in the provincial capital following her father's death.
Police have described Ms Fontaine as "highly vulnerable" and said she was exploited during her time on the run. She was in the care of the child-welfare system in Winnipeg, Manitoba, when she disappeared.
Her body was found weighed down and wrapped in a duvet cover, and she was identified in part by the angel wings tattooed on her back.
The discovery of her body sent shockwaves through the city.
Hundreds took to the streets and social media to demand better protection for indigenous women and girls.
The murder also shone a spotlight on ways the system failed the teenager. On the last day she was seen alive, she interacted with police, hospital staff and child welfare workers.
There was an outburst of emotion in a Winnipeg courtroom after a jury found Raymond Cormier not guilty in the death of Tina Fontaine, a 15-year-old Indigenous girl whose body was pulled from the city's Red River in 2014.
The jury of seven women and four men delivered the verdict, as family and friends of the teenager from Sagkeeng First Nation reacted with sorrow and outrage. The trial lasted for just over three weeks.
"F--k you if you think you can get away with this," said her biological mother Valentina Duck, walking out of the room immediately after the verdict was read.
“My baby, my baby,” cried Fontaine’s great aunt Thelma Favel, weak with emotion and barely able to stand. Family members and supporters formed a circle around her. They prayed, and eventually, helped her get up and leave the courtroom. In the hallway, she sat down and continued to weep.
Outside the courthouse, Indigenous leaders stood side by side, delivering impassioned speeches on all the ways Canada’s institutions were responsible for what happened to the teenager.
"This is not the outcome anybody wanted. The systems, everything that was involved in Tina's life failed her." said Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak (MKO) Grand Chief Sheila North. If Cormier wasn’t the one who took Fontaine’s life, North demanded the person responsible be found and that the institutions that were supposed to care for Fontaine be held responsible.
In a statement after the verdict, Winnipeg police said they had conducted an “extensive investigation” into Fontaine’s death, but that they would not comment on the case directly while the Crown decided whether or not to appeal.
Speaking with reporters, North passed on a message from Fontaine’s great aunt Thelma.
“She does not want to see any more violence against anyone,” said North. “She doesn’t want to see any retaliation, because that’s not what our people are about.
“She wants peace. She wants healing. She wants justice and we’re going to continue to look for that justice on her behalf.”
On Friday, Indigenous leaders and Fontaine’s supporters will gather outside the courthouse again to protest the verdict and honour her memory.
Federal Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett tweeted her support to Fontaine’s family, after the verdict was announced.
"Tina's is a tragic story that demonstrates the failures of all the systems for Indigenous children and youth on every level. We need to do better — we need to fix this," she wrote.
Fontaine’s case has been a lightning rod, raising questions about the province’s troubled child welfare system and police treatment of Indigenous youth. It reignited calls for a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada, and galvanized the Indigenous community in Winnipeg, which began protesting against the systems they believed were oppressing them.
Emotions are high around the verdict, which comes on the heels of the acquittal of a white farmer in Saskatchewan, accused of killing a young Indigenous man. That verdict sparked nationwide protests, with Indigenous people calling for urgent reform to increase Indigenous jury representation and other changes to the justice system. The jury that found Gerald Stanley not guilty was all white.
Teenager Tina Fontaine had travelled to Winnipeg with her sister in June of 2014 to reconnect with her mother after years of being apart. The death of her father in 2011 had devastated her, Fontaine’s great-aunt Thelma Favel told the court. While her sister quickly went home, Fontaine stayed behind, and when Favel didn’t hear from her, she got worried and called Manitoba’s Child and Welfare system for help, and Fontaine was taken into care.
She was last seen at the Best Western Charterhouse Hotel in downtown Winnipeg, where Child and Famly Services had arranged a room for her. She told a social worker she was going to a local mall to meet some friends, and was reported missing an hour and a half after she missed curfew. She never came back.
When Winnipeg police pulled the then 15-year-old’s 72-pound body, wrapped in a duvet, from the Red River in 2014, she had been missing for nine days. Her body had been in the river for at least a week, the court heard .
Police found Fontaine by accident. They’d been looking for a man who had been seen struggling in the river. After Fontaine’s body was discovered, a group of Indigenous volunteers organized to search the Red River for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls was formed in an effort called Drag The Red.
In the city’s north end, the Bear Clan Patrol, a group of Indigenous volunteers who hadn’t been active since the early 90s, began patrolling the streets again. The group of 15 volunteers set to patrol on Thursday was in a room, gearing up, when news of the verdict came.
“I wasn’t shocked when the verdict came down. For me, that’s the worst part because at this point, we as a community don’t have any expectation of justice anymore,” executive director James Favel told VICE News in an interview. “So what’s left for us? I’m numb. I don’t know what to feel. It’s so fucking disappointing, yet I expected it all along.”
More than a year after Fontaine’s death, Winnipeg police charged Raymond Cormier, a 56-year-old man with a lengthy criminal history including violent offences, with second degree murder in the death of Fontaine.
Cormier has maintained his innocence. He claims was the target of what’s known as a Mr. Big operation, a controversial investigation tactic used by police to get confessions out of suspects by creating a fictitious criminal organization around them, and making them feel they have to confess to the crime in order to join.
Cormier’s lawyers argued made the case that there was no conclusive evidence that Fontaine died as a result of an unlawful act. The Crown made the case that Cormier killed Fontaine after he had sex with her and found out that she was only 15.
While there isn’t any DNA evidence linking Cormier to Fontaine’s death and experts have testified that they don’t know how she died, the Crown submitted secretly recorded conversations in which they argued that Cormier made statements that amount to admissions of guilt.
The Crown and the defence presented two interpretations of statements Cormier made in the recordings. While the Crown argued they amounted to confessions, the defence contended that Cormier was talking about what it would be like to be in the killer’s shoes and expressing guilt that he didn’t do more for Fontaine.
Cormier’s lawyers urged the jury to instead pay attention to the parts of the conversation in which he denied murdering anyone.
At one point, in a recording from July, Cormier can be heard saying, "15-year-old girl f--k. I drew the line and that's why she got killed. She got killed, I'll make you a bet. She got killed because we found out, I found out she was 15 years old."
"You ever been haunted by something? What happened there really f--king it's not right. F--k. It's right on the shore. So what do I do? Threw her in," Cormier said to a woman during another conversation in September.
"I did Tina, f--king supposed to be legal and only 15. [Inaudible]. No going back, too,” he said. “The cops said if there would have been DNA and then probably they would've had enough evidence to charge, you know that, for the murder of Tina Fontaine."
Crown prosecutor Jim Ross said in his closing statements that the case was a “true whodunnit.”
“The answer, ladies and gentlemen, was given to you by Mr. Cormier,” said Ross. “His own words identified himself as the killer of Tina Fontaine. For what man admits to murder but that he did murder?"
Ross had also relied on testimony from witnesses who said they saw Cormier and Fontaine together after she disappeared from the hotel where she was staying. They also testified that Cormier owned the same kind of duvet that Fontaine’s body was wrapped in when police found it, that he had made sexual advances towards her, and that he tried to conceal the fact that he had stolen a truck, which would’ve given him a way to dispose of her body. He also pointed to evidence like Cormier running away from police when they were arresting him.
"It's evidence a jury can grapple with. That's not what a trial judge is supposed to do, usurp the the jury's ability to judge," Joyal had said in court, shutting down the defence’s request for the case to be dismissed based on a lack of evidence.
A pathologist testified the cause of Fontaine’s death couldn’t be determined, but that drowning and smothering couldn’t be ruled out. Ross said both were likely. But defence lawyer Tony Kavanagh argued this meant it was impossible to know whether Fontaine died by an unlawful act.
Although a toxicologist said it was unlikely that Fontaine died as a result of the alcohol or marijuana found in her system, Kavanagh argued that self-smothering due to intoxication or an overdose as a result of taking epilepsy medication gabapentin, which Fontaine’s friend Cody Mason testified Cormier gave them, were also likely causes, CBC reported.
“The systems — everything — involved in Tina’s life failed her. We’ve all failed her. We as a nation need to do better for our young people. All of us,” said Sheila North, grand chief of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, an organization that represents northern Manitoba First Nations.
Tina’s body, wrapped in a duvet cover and weighed down with rocks, was pulled from the Red River in Winnipeg eight days after she was reported missing in August 2014. Cormier was charged more than a year later.
WINNIPEG—A not-guilty verdict Thursday for a man who had been accused of killing a 15-year-old First Nations girl he met on the streets prompted immediate reaction from Indigenous leaders who criticized the safety nets that were supposed to keep her safe.
“It might not be this accused person that took her life but someone took her life. That fact remains and we must get to the bottom of it,” she said.
Boushie was with four other young people who drove their SUV into a Saskatchewan farmyard in August 2016. The young man from the Red Pheasant First Nation died when he was shot in the back of the head as he sat in the vehicle.
“All of us should be ashamed of what happened to her and Colten Boushie and to others.”
Read more:
Jury to decide fate of Raymond Cormier, accused of killing Tina Fontaine
Prosecutors argue Raymond Cormier’s own words convict him in Tina Fontaine’s death
Jury finished hearing evidence in trial of man accused of killing Tina Fontaine
The trial of farmer Gerald Stanley was fraught with racial tension that intensified after he was found not guilty earlier this month by an all-white jury. He testified that he fired warning shots to scare the young people before his gun accidentally went off, killing Boushie, 22.
There were gasps from Tina’s family and their supporters as the Cormier verdict was read. Her great-aunt Thelma Favel, the woman who raised Tina on the Sagkeeng First Nation, wept. Cormier’s reaction was not visible because the prisoner’s box faced away from the gallery.
Tina had left her Sagkeeng home to visit her mother in Winnipeg. In the city, Tina spent time on the streets and was being sexually exploited. She had been placed in a hotel by social workers when she disappeared.
“How can we talk about reconciliation when the very nets we are asked to participate in do not fulfil what they are supposed to fulfil?” asked Arlen Dumas, grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.
“We can no longer maintain these mechanisms that are prescribed to us. If we want reconciliation and truly protect our children and families, we can no longer allow the status quo to exist.”
Federal Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett tweeted after the verdict.
“Tina’s is a tragic story that demonstrates the failures of all the systems for Indigenous children and youth on every level. We need to do better. We need to fix this.”
North also relayed a message from Favel.
“I want to pass on a message from Thelma that we have to maintain the peace,” North said. “She does not want to see any more violence against anyone. She doesn’t want to see any retaliation, because that’s not what our people are about.
“She wants peace. She wants healing. She wants justice and we’re going to continue to look for that justice on her behalf.”
The Crown had argued that Cormier convicted himself with his own admissions on secret police recordings, but the defence said numerous forensic holes in the prosecution’s case had left reasonable doubt.
There was no DNA evidence linking Cormier to the teen and doctors who were called to testify said they could not definitively say how Tina died.
Over three weeks of testimony, the jury heard how Tina’s relatively stable upbringing spiralled out of control when her father was murdered.
She and her boyfriend met Cormier in the summer of 2014. The jury heard Cormier gave the couple a place to stay, gave Tina drugs and had sex with her.
Witnesses remember Tina and Cormier fighting in the street over a stolen truck and Tina accusing him of selling her bike for drugs. Tina went so far as to report a stolen truck to police.
Winnipeg police declined to comment on where the case goes from here, calling their original investigation, which included a six-month undercover sting, “extensive.”
“Generally after a trial, the case, including the court proceedings themselves will be examined to determine if an appeal is possible or appropriate,” police said in a statement. “While that process is ongoing, we have made the decision to not comment on this case directly.”
Derrick Henderson, chief of Tina’s home reserve, echoed other Indigenous leaders in saying the system needs to be fixed.
“My community of Sagkeeng will be hurting as I go home today,” he said outside court. “The people in this country need to know Tina was loved by everybody.
“The system has failed our people. We need to correct that. We need to right that for all the Indigenous people in this world.”
A jury has found Raymond Cormier not guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Tina Fontaine.
The 15-year-old girl’s body was pulled from the Red River on Aug. 17, 2014, wrapped inside a duvet cover and weighted down with rocks.
WATCH: ‘We’ve all failed her’: Indigenous leader reacts after Raymond Cormier found not guilty in death of Tina Fontaine
In a statement, Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman said his thoughts were with Fontaine’s family and with members of the Sagkeeng First Nation.
“Winnipeg and Canadians may have different views on today’s outcome in the case. I think it is important, however, to be mindful that for many people, today is a day marked by grief, anger and broken hearts,” read the statement. “No one can be blind to the racial tensions in our country.
“There’s no question in my mind that we all failed Tina. And we are all continuing to fail other young Indigenous people in communities across our country.”
After a more than three week trial, the jury started deliberating Wednesday afternoon.
The 11 person jury heard from nearly 50 witnesses before closing arguments Tuesday. Cormier never took the stand and his defence team did not call any witnesses.
READ MORE: How jury members are picked in Manitoba
The Crown presented no physical or forensic evidence linking Cormier to the crime.
WATCH: Chiefs call Cormier verdict setback for reconciliation in Canada
Witnesses testified they saw the 56-year-old and Fontaine together in the days before she disappeared in early August.
The largely circumstantial case relied heavily on a series of audio recordings made by police over a six month undercover operation dubbed ‘Project Styx.’
The project, which ran from June to December 2015, involved undercover police officers and ‘bugs’ that were placed inside Cormier’s Winnipeg apartment suite.
In a number of those recordings, Cormier spoke about having sex with Fontaine, who was a minor, and talked about “finishing the job.”
However, Cormier has maintained his innocence since he was arrested.
There is sobbing from family in the gallery. Fontaine’s mom “f—- you, you think you’re going to get away with it you f—-er” and has left the courtroom — Brittany Greenslade (@BrittAtGlobal) February 22, 2018
During his initial arrest on Oct. 1, 2014, Cormier was interrogated by two police officers.
Throughout the interrogation video, Cormier repeatedly told officers he did not do it.
WATCH: Acquaintance of Raymond Cormier testifies that “Ray told me that he slept with her”
“You’re investigating the wrong person,” Cormier shouted to officers. “Do your job. Go find the f-ing person who did this.”
At one point Cormier yelled, “I don’t know what happened to that f-ing girl. Do you understand. All I know is she got f-ing murdered.”
READ MORE: Emotional, tearful day of closing arguments at Raymond Cormier trial
Cormier has been in jail since he was charged in December 2015.
The Crown will now decide if there is grounds for an appeal.
WATCH: Anger spills out of courtroom after Raymond Cormier found not guilty in death of Tina Fontaine
The Winnipeg Police Service said it conducted an “extensive investigation” into Fontaine’s murder, and that court proceedings and the case would be examined to determine if an appeal is possible.
“We understand that this is a difficult time for Tina Fontaine’s family, our community, and all those personally affected by her loss,” read the statement. “Our thoughts today are with everyone impacted by this tragedy.”
— With files from Rahul Kalvapalle
