The man acquitted in the slaying of an Indigenous teenager in Winnipeg has been found dead in Kenora, Ont., according to a media report Monday.
A jury in 2018 found Raymond Cormier not guilty of second-degree murder in the death of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine.
Winnipeg Police Service spokesman Const. Jason Michalyshen said Monday he was not able to confirm whether homicide detectives broke the news of Cormier’s death to Tina’s great aunt, as reported by APTN.
Raymond Cormier is seen in this photo taken of evidence provided by the court in 2018. Cormier was found not guilty of second-degree murder in the death of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine. (Steve Lambert / The Canadian Press files)
Officials at the Ontario Provincial Police detachment in Kenora could not be reached for comment.
Cormier, who was 56 when he was tried for Tina’s death, was a convicted thief with a long rap sheet, originally from New Brunswick.
The 15-year-old from Sagkeeng First Nation, whose life was thrown into turmoil after her father’s 2011 slaying, was found dead in the Red River on Aug. 17, 2014. She had been reported missing eight days earlier. Her body was pulled from the water wrapped in a duvet cover and weighed down with rocks.
No DNA evidence was found. The Crown’s case against Cormier was largely based on a six-month Winnipeg Police Service undercover investigation.
Tina and Cormier met in the summer of 2014, when Cormier was riding his bicycle down Charles Street. Tina and her teenage boyfriend stopped the much older homeless man and told him they had nowhere to go.
Cormier was one of the last people to see the girl alive. He admitted to arguing with her before she died, but repeatedly denied killing her.
He was arrested and questioned about six weeks after Tina’s body was found but wasn’t charged with her death initially.
He was held in jail on two unrelated charges — theft and breach of a court order — until June 2015, when the undercover operation Project Styx began.
Detectives bugged Cormier’s apartment and sent in undercover officers to interact with him, as other investigators collected evidence.
He was charged with second-degree murder in December 2015.
Tina Fontaine was found dead in the Red River on Aug. 17, 2014. She had been reported missing eight days earlier. Her body was pulled from the water wrapped in a duvet cover and weighed down with rocks. (Facebook photo / Free Press files)
The wiretaps collected 10,000 conversations in his Logan Avenue apartment, which the Crown argued was its “strongest evidence” implicating Cormier.
The case remains open.
The not guilty verdict in February 2018 sparked an outcry in the courtroom from Tina’s family and Indigenous leaders.
Tina’s slaying renewed calls for an inquiry into why Indigenous women are killed or go missing at disproportionate rates in Canada.
The federal government launched the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in September 2016, with the final report issued in June 2019. The report contained 231 calls to action in 18 areas including the justice, education and health systems.
Few have been completed, with marginal progress on some and other recommendations untouched, the Native Women’s Association of Canada said last June.