“A life taken from us,” Natasha Harrison said of her daughter Tatiana. “She deserved so much more than this world was willing to give her.” Harrison reported her daughter missing on May 3. It turns out Richmond RCMP had already found the 20-year-old’s remains on a boat moored in the Fraser River the day before, but didn’t positively identify her until the first week of August. According to her family, a preliminary medical examiner’s report indicated that Tatiana died of fentanyl toxicity. Her mother says the RCMP ruled the death non-suspicious and closed the case – even though Tatiana’s body was discovered naked from the waist down. “Well, you swept her case under the rug. Tatiana is worth a lot more than you’re willing to give her and now the world is without her. We don’t have her in our lives anymore,” Harrison said. More than 100 people gathered at the Richmond Marina where Tatiana’s remains lay. Family members of Noelle O’Soup, an Indigenous teenager found dead at Hastings Street SRO, and Chelsea Poorman, a young Indigenous woman whose body was found on the property of a west side mansion, also spoke at the vigil. “Stop allowing this to happen. Start talking so we don’t have any more Noelle O’Soups,” said Josie August, O’Soup’s relative. “(She was 13 years old. She should be at the mall. She should be with her friends. She should be with her family.” O’Soup went missing from her foster home in Port Coquitlam in May 2021 and her remains were found in May 2022. On February 24, Vancouver police found a man in his 40s dead inside the same room, but did not thoroughly search him. More than two months later, a cleaning crew clearing the man’s belongings from the apartment found the bodies of O’Soup and a woman who has not been publicly identified. The Office of the Police Complaints Commissioner has opened an investigation into the conduct of an officer in the Vancouver Police Department for alleged dereliction of duty in connection with the case. That investigation is currently on hold while a criminal investigation unfolds into the deaths of O’Soup and the other woman in the room. Portman was missing for nearly two years before a contractor working on a Shaugnessy mansion found her body on the property. Parts of her skull and some of her fingers were missing. The VPD says it believes Porman died the day she disappeared, or shortly after, and her remains had been exposed to the elements for 20 months. Although the investigation remains open, police said there is insufficient evidence to call Porman’s death suspicious. The three families who spoke at the vigil have more in common than grief – they also share a belief that police did not do enough to find their missing daughters and are not thoroughly investigating the circumstances of their deaths. “She’s somebody. She’s somebody’s daughter, she’s somebody’s niece, they’re loved,” said Sheila Poorman, Chelsea’s mother. Despite the immense pain that comes with sharing their grief publicly, the families of Harrison, Portman and O’Soup are doing so so that their loved ones are not forgotten as they continue to search for answers to how and why they died.
