Family grieves woman found at recycling depot By: Kevin Rollason Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2018

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This article was published 01/10/2018 (2180 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The father of a 33-year-old woman whose body was found at a Winnipeg recycling depot expressed relief Tuesday she will not be among missing and murdered Indigenous women whose fate is never known.

Rex Ross speaks from tragic experience. While he grieves his daughter, he also knows what it’s like to spend years looking fruitlessly for a family member and never getting closure: his niece was 16-year-old Sunshine Wood, who was last seen on Feb. 20, 2004, holding a door open for somebody outside of the St. Regis Hotel.

“We are so fortunate that she was found in a recycling bin,” said Ross of his daughter, Mary Madeline Yellowback. Tears welled in his eyes as his wife, Hager, sat beside him at a news conference, somberly looking down.

“If it was a regular bin, the grey ones, they may have transported her body to their main harvest dump… I have been through that process through my niece that went missing years ago from the St. Regis. Those are the things that come back to me.”

Yellowback’s body was found Friday night when workers at Cascades Recovery, a recycling depot at 100 Omands Creek Blvd., located her among collected recyclables. Winnipeg police previously said they believe Yellowback ended up in a recycling bin somewhere in the city, and was unknowingly transported in a collections truck to the depot.

“We are so fortunate that she was found in a recycling bin… If it was a regular bin, the grey ones, they may have transported her body to their main harvest dump”
– Rex Ross, father of a 33-year-old woman whose body was found in a recycling bin

Winnipeg police said on Tuesday that an autopsy has not determined whether her death was a homicide. They are still awaiting results from toxicology tests.

“The cause of death has been determined, but the details are still being investigated,” police spokeswoman Const. Tammy Skrabek said. “We are still referring to it as a suspicious death. We don’t know if this is a homicide yet.

“But it was tragic; somehow she ended up in a recycling bin.”

Police have released surveillance photographs, which show Yellowback in the hours before her death, hoping that someone will come forward who saw her.

Yellowback was wearing blue jeans and a grey hooded sweatshirt with a large red R emblazoned on the front. She is described as Indigenous, and about 5-foot-7 in height and 135 pounds.

Yellowback’s parents, from Manto Sipi Cree Nation, said their daughter had lived in Winnipeg for some time, but had been living back at her home community. They said she had come to Winnipeg with one of her children who had a medical appointment.

The family said the woman was married to Cliff Yellowback and they had six children, ages 13, nine, six, four and three. A daughter, aged four, died in a car collision in 2009.

They said their daughter grew up with four brothers and three sisters. They said she loved sports, being active in hockey for almost two decades, and got her nickname, Tom, while playing on the local Manto Sipi Cree Nation boys team while she was a teenager.

She was working in her home community as a home care worker and “she enjoyed helping the elders enjoy a better quality of life. Mary was helpful and kind to everyone she encountered. Her family would describe her as ‘happy go lucky’.”

“If anyone out there knows or have seen my daughter… come forward. It will bring the closure to our lives of losing our daughter through this tragic event”
– Rex Ross

Michèle Audette, a commissioner with the national inquiry into murdered and missing Aboriginal women, came from the inquiry, being held this week in Winnipeg, to join the family at the news conference.

“At the inquiry, when we heard, we had a moment of silence (for Yellowback),” Audette said.

“Why? Why is it still happening every week? Every two weeks we meet across Canada to receive the truth of families… and every week, when they come, we have to have that moment of silence because we heard through the news somebody has gone missing, somebody has been found dead, somebody has disappeared.

“I strongly believe we deserve better.”

Grand Chief Arlen Dumas, of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, said it was “extremely tragic to hear a father say he is grateful of where his daughter was found with recyclables.

“At least he didn’t have to have an unending search for a loved one.”

Ross said now his own family has joined the seemingly endless number of families who have had a woman in their family senselessly taken and killed.

“I never realized that it would be me, it would be me who would lose a daughter through this tragic event of being destroyed,” he said.

The father also had a message for anybody who is out there who knows what happened to his daughter or saw her in the hours before she died.

“If anyone out there knows or have seen my daughter… come forward. It will bring the closure to our lives of losing our daughter through this tragic event.

“It would be appreciated.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca

Kevin Rollason
Reporter

Kevin Rollason is one of the more versatile reporters at the Winnipeg Free Press. Whether it is covering city hall, the law courts, or general reporting, Rollason can be counted on to not only answer the 5 Ws — Who, What, When, Where and Why — but to do it in an interesting and accessible way for readers.

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