Indigenous woman dies after trailer hitch attack
Thunder Bay family, community leaders demand death be seen as hate crime
Barbara Kentner, a young Indigenous mother who was hit in the stomach by a trailer hitch thrown by a passenger in a speeding car in Thunder Bay, died early Tuesday morning.
The metal trailer hitch struck Kentner, 34, on Jan. 29 and she sustained devastating internal injuries. Her sister Melissa, who was walking down the street with Barbara at the time of the assault, said she heard a blond passenger in the car yell, “I (expletive) got one of them,” as they drove past.
Barbara spent the next five months hospitalized in agony as her major organs shut down. Barbara’s teenage daughter, Serena, Melissa and her cousin Debbie Kakagamic were all fixtures at her side.
Kentner is being remembered as a mom and a devoted sister who was always happy, full of life and who was dearly loved by her family.
“She had a wonderful sense of humour and she loved every member of her family and everybody loved her,” said Kakagamic.
“She has one daughter, Serena, who is 16. Serena would go to the hospital and climb in bed and lay with her mom. She loved her mom so much. She rubbed her mom’s forehead, held her hand, straightened her blanket out for her.”
Her family and Indigenous leaders in Thunder Bay are demanding her death be considered a hate crime. For years, many Indigenous people in Thunder Bay have complained about the level of racism they face in the city daily.
During the eight-month long inquest into the seven Indigenous students who died between 2000 to 2011 while at high school in Thunder Bay, many youth testified they were the targets of racial taunts and often had garbage thrown at them from passing cars. Of the seven students who died, five were found in rivers and three of those deaths were ruled ‘undetermined’ by the inquest jury.
The city has been further on edge after the disappearances and deaths of Indigenous teens Tammy Keeash, 17, and Josiah Begg,14. Both vanished on the night of May 6 and then were later found dead in the city’s waterways. Indigenous leaders said they no longer trusted the local police authorities to investigate the teens’ deaths and that they wanted the RCMP to come in and take over the investigations.
The Thunder Bay Police Service is currently being investigated for “systemic racism” concerning how they handle Indigenous missing persons and death cases.
Last month, Ontario’s Chief Coroner, Dr. Dirk Huyer, announced that York Regional Police and the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service would be brought in to investigate Begg and Keeash’s deaths.
Also last month, Statistics Canada reported that Thunder Bay had the highest number of hate crimes reported by police in a metropolitan area across the country.
In the Kentner case, Thunder Bay Police Services said that a post mortem will now be conducted in Toronto sometime this week. Police made an arrest in the case in February and charged Brayden Bushby,18, with aggravated assault. His case is still before the courts.
“The determination and consideration of this incident being a hate motivated crime would be part of the penalty/sentencing aspect of the trial of the accused,” said Chris Adams, executive officer with Thunder Bay Police Services.
Racism is a huge problem in Thunder Bay and everyone in the city must acknowledge it and work together to end it, said Nishnawbe Aski Nation Deputy Grand Chief Anna Betty Achneepineskum.
“This has been going on for far too long. This is our reality as many Indigenous peoples, especially our women, have come to me with their stories,” Achneepineskum said in a release.
Kentner, who is originally from Waabigon Saaga’igan Anishinaabeg or Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, lost her parents at an early age. She was raised in Thunder Bay.