Questions linger for family of woman found dead in field

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This article was published 12/06/2022 (928 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Lori Ann Mancheese’s dream was to have her own house at Ebb and Flow First Nation, instead of being homeless in Winnipeg.

Tragically, that dream came to an end last week, when the body of the 53-year-old mother of five and grandmother of seven was found in a farmer’s field near Highway 8 and Grassmere Road in West St. Paul.

“It’s what she always wanted: a house,” her sister Norma said by telephone Monday from the reserve 235 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg on the west side of Lake Manitoba. “We need more housing on our reserve. Our chief and council try do do their best, but there could be two or three families living in one home. The federal government needs to do more to get more housing.

“If she had a home here, she would still be alive.”

RCMP are continuing to investigate after finding the body of a woman in a field north of Winnipeg on June 6 at about 4:30 p.m.

Police said they are still awaiting the results of an autopsy, but added, at this point, they see nothing that would point to the death as being criminal in nature.

Anyone with any information is asked to call Red River North RCMP at 204-482-1222 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

NDP MLA Nahanni Fontaine has talked with Mancheese’s grieving family several times in recent days. There will be a vigil Thursday, she said.

The family has been left with several questions about Mancheese’s death, including wondering how a woman whose mobility was impaired could get to a field so far away from the Main Street area she normally frequented, seeking assistance from Siloam Mission, Salvation Army and the Main Street Project, Fontaine said.

“The family is rightly concerned Lori Ann’s death involves foul play,” the MLA said. “They want to make sure people are taking the death of this sister, mother, grandmother, seriously.”

There are concerns Mancheese’s death comes so close to the deaths of three other Indigenous women in Winnipeg in recent weeks, Fontaine said.

“There is a historical continuum of disposing of Indigenous women in the periphery of the city as garbage. It is worrisome and people should be concerned,” she said.

Norma said she also doesn’t understand why, if her sister’s body was found June 6, it took until June 9 for officials to notify her.

“She had a bracelet on from Concordia Hospital; they should have found me through there. I’m her next of kin,” she said.

Norma has reached out to the hospital but health-care officials said police told them not to say anything. She has also heard her sister may have been at Seven Oaks General Hospital on McPhillips Street, a few kilometres south of where her body was found.

There was no way her sister, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, would have been able to walk nearly half-a-kilometre through a muddy field, Norma said she told police.

“I said she would have had a hard time to walk that far. They said there are only her footsteps and everything else was washed away. But why weren’t hers washed away?” Norma said.

“All they said was she was face down and she had her hands on her heart and she was badly decomposed. They said they can’t say anything more because of the ongoing investigation.”

Mancheese was born into a family of 19 children; there are now six surviving siblings.

Norma said through the years, her sister got into a cycle where she would live on the reserve with family members for various lengths of time, but then would go to Winnipeg, where she lived on the street.

The family is in touch with a friend who says she went for coffee with Mancheese on June 2, Norma said, adding police believe her sister’s body was in the field for between five and seven days.

As for the vigil Thursday, Norma said it will be a chance for her and others to gather to remember and honour Mancheese.

“We are going to the site where we lost her and where they found her,” she said. “She was a happy, funny person… That’s how I will remember her.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca