Teenage girl committed to trial in drowning of child
OCT. 14 , 1938
Nellie Adamchuk was committed to trial at a preliminary hearing for the murder of three-year-old Joan Holloway, who drowned in the North Saskatchewan River on Sept. 22.
The 18-year-old former Ponoka mental patient, who was charged 10 days after the little girl’s body was recovered, had no legal representation, but when told she could question witnesses, she told Dr. John Macgregor, assistant provincial pathologist:
“Doctor, I would like to go home to my mother.”
“Is there anything else?” asked the magistrate presiding over the case. “No, thank you,” she replied. Ten days earlier, Adamchuk con- fessed to a coroner’s jury she had “pushed” the child into the water.
“Somehow I pushed her. I never meant to. I don’t know why I did it when I wanted to take her back to her mother,” the pale, emotionless prisoner said.
Adamchuk approached Joan, the girl’s six-year-old sister, Grace, and a six-year-old friend, Loretta Henderson, at the Gyro playground on 95th Street. The two older girls testified that Adamchuk abandoned them near Borden Park, taking Joan in the direction of Beverly and Clover Bar.
“On that day I went to the show and then I went to the Gyro playground on 95th Street,” Adamchuk said. “Some little kids there said they wanted me to buy them some candies. They had some pails. I took them with me.
“I left the two bigger kids near Borden Park because they wouldn’t want to come. I took Joan Holloway to Clover Bar. I carried her. She was too tired to walk … I knew a lady at Clover Bar. We didn’t go on the bridge. We went under it to see the nice water. Something happened. I pushed her. I didn’t mean to.
“She fell flat on her face in the water. I saw two bubbles.”
Adamchuk said she used two hands to “push her in the back while she was standing on a rock in the water.”
“What made you do it?” asked the Crown prosecutor. “I don’t know,” she replied. “She was crying for daddy. She wanted her daddy. I wanted to bring her back, but it was too late. She was a smart little girl, a nice little girl. While I was carrying her she kept saying, ‘My mother is nice; my sister is nice,’ ” the accused testified.
The coroner’s jury found Joan drowned as a result of Adamchuk pushing her into the water. They also declared: “We are of the opinion Nellie Adamchuk is ‘mentally deficient.’ ”
Adamchuk was in the news again on April 17, 1943, after using a strap to strangle a 44-year-old fellow patient at Oliver Mental Institution while she “was in one of her periodic spells,” the story said.
Something happened. I pushed her. I didn’t mean to. She fell flat on her face in the water. I saw two bubbles.