Mystery surrounds woman’s death at border
GRANDMOTHER’S BODY FOUND WITH $15, NO PHONE
Days before her perilous journey to the Canadian border, Mavis Otuteye did not drop any hint of her plans to the people around her in Delaware.
Not to staff at the Middletown African Market. Not to her friend who took her to get a haircut. Not even to her cousin, with whom she shared an apartment.
“She didn’t tell me she was going to Canada. She said she was going to Maryland,” Helen Larnyoh told the National Post by phone. “It is too much for me.” It wasn’t until last week, when Otuteye’s daughter in Toronto, Peace Lani, called in a panic asking if anyone had heard from her mother, that the cloak of secrecy was lifted: Otuteye had set off for Canada to reunite with her daughter, who had just given birth to a baby girl — likely with the intention of staying.
That panic turned to grief on May 26, when Otuteye’s body was found in a rural drainage ditch near Noyes, Minn., less than a kilometre from the Manitoba border. The cause of death appeared to be hypothermia.
Now, compounding the grief are new questions. According to friends and people who have talked to the family, Otuteye, 57, was found with only $15 on her and the two cellphones she owned were missing. They can’t help but wonder: who else was with her on the journey?
So far, the Kittson County Sheriff’s Department has declined to comment on these details or on what may have happened.
It is not certain whether Otuteye, an undocumented immigrant from Ghana, intended to claim asylum once she reached Canada. But at a time when Canada has seen a rise in asylum seekers making the risky journey across the border, her death has ratcheted up calls by advocacy groups for Canada to bow out of the Safe Third Country Agreement, which allows border officers to turn away asylum seekers if they come via other “safe” countries, such as the U.S. The policy does not apply to those who reach Canadian soil first.
In a statement Friday, a federal immigration spokeswoman said Canada was not budging from its position.
“The Safe Third Country Agreement is an important tool used by Canada and the U.S. to co-operate on the orderly handling of refugee claims,” the statement said. “It’s based on a principle supported by the UN Refugee Agency that individuals must claim asylum in the first country they arrive in.”
Originally from Accra, the capital of Ghana, one of West Africa’s more stable countries, Otuteye landed in Baltimore in 2003 on a visitor’s visa, said Kris Grogan, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. She remained in the U.S. after her visa expired in 2006, he said.
A few years ago, Otuteye moved from Maryland to Newark, Del., said Tibuah, who knew her from Ghana. Over the years, she worked as an aide to seniors and also supplied markets with homemade African foods, he said.
Tibuah last saw Otuteye a couple of weeks ago. She was her usual self, he said.
“It was a shock to me,” he said, when he found out that she had taken off for Canada.
Friends later learned that she had taken a taxi to the airport and then a plane to Minnesota, Thomas said.
One of the last people to speak to her was her niece, Augustina Otuteye. That was on May 25. “She wasn’t herself. I was asking her, ‘Are you OK?’ She said, ‘I’m fine,’ ” she told CBC News.
“She sounded very quiet, but I thought maybe she was tired or not feeling good, so I said, ‘OK, I will call you back later, I will let you rest.’ ”
When she tried calling her the next day, the phone went to voice mail.
Around the same time, Otuteye’s daughter was also getting worried. She called Larnyoh, her mother’s roommate, in a panic. That’s when Larnyoh learned Otuteye was headed for Canada.
The Kittson County Sheriff’s Department said it received a missing person report on May 25. The following day, Otuteye’s body was found by border agents in a field near Highway 75, the main road that leads to Emerson, Man.
“It bothers me a lot,” Thomas said about Otuteye’s decision to cross the border on foot. “What inspired her to take such a decision?”
Otuteye’s daughter knew her mother was coming, but didn’t know how she was going to get into Canada, according to Maggie Yeboah, president of the Ghanaian Union of Manitoba, who spoke to her this week.
Yeboah said Peace Lani learned after her mother’s death that her mother was supposed to cross the border in a vehicle with a man, a scenario that would make more sense because her mother was not the type to travel alone and she also had a bad back.
Peace Lani was told by authorities that her mother was found with only $15 on her, which doesn’t make sense for someone on such a big journey, Yeboah said.
Thomas said he has also since learned that two cellphones Otuteye owned were missing. Late Friday, Yeboah shared another intriguing piece of information. A woman from Ghana who had recently crossed the Manitoba border told Yeboah that last Saturday, she encountered a man in a car in the border town of Gretna who asked if she had seen a woman in her 50s. He was supposed to receive a call from her but never did. Could it have been the man who dropped Otuteye off near the border?
Those who knew her can’t help but think about these questions. “It’s a mystery,” Tibuah said.