FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE
Jared Ahenakew weeps Friday as he revisits the site where his son Brennan’s body was found inside a burning car days earlier. Ahenakew and his family say the RCMP and justice system aren’t doing enough to help Indigenous victims of crime.
AHTAHKAKOOP FIRST NATION Jared Ahenakew is already sobbing with fresh grief as he steps out of his car beside the burned grove of trees.
“Sorry,” he says, wiping away tears. “Sorry. I haven’t been here since it happened.”
Barely more than a week has passed since Ahenakew woke up on May 10 to discover his oldest son, 20-year-old Brennan Ahenakew, wasn’t home; barely more than a week since he heard bone-chilling rumours that Brennan had been beaten, murdered and burned in his car; barely more than a week since he and his wife raced from their home to a secluded site, less than 10 minutes away, to see the smouldering remains of their son’s beloved car, and Brennan’s ashes within.
In the days immediately after, Jared says he lost the drive to do anything. But then people started sending his family messages expressing sympathy and sharing stories of how they, too, had family members who had been victims of violence on reserves.
Jared and his wife, Lisa Johnstone, are now determined to seek justice for their son. They say gangs are allowed to run rampant on reserves and the RCMP and justice system aren’t doing enough to help Indigenous victims of crime.
They want change, and they want Brennan’s death to be the catalyst.
“This fight is not ending. My boy is the voice, he’s the face of us natives, of how we’ve got to change. I’ll be his voice. This has got to change for our people,” Jared says. “Other families don’t have the strength that we have. They’re scared. I’ll be the voice for all our people.”
After watching a jury acquit Saskatchewan farmer Gerald Stanley of murder in the 2016 shooting death of Colten Boushie, a Cree man from Red Pheasant First Nation, Jared and Lisa say they feel Indigenous people aren’t treated fairly by Canada’s justice system and they ’re trying to do everything they can to make sure Brennan gets justice.
Like Boushie’s family, they want people to pay attention to their story. Boushie’s family was assisted by a lawyer. Jared and Lisa are raising money to pay for the same kind of help.
They say they ’re angry with how the RCMP are handling the investigation into their son’s death and want to sue the national police force.
When they woke up on May 10 to discover Brennan was gone and his car was missing, they initially assumed he’d spent the night with a friend. But when he didn’t respond to text messages from his mother, they became increasingly worried as the day went on.
Lisa called the RCMP at 4:49 p.m. to file a missing person’s report. She posted on Facebook, asking friends and family if anyone had seen her son. Someone told her they’d heard Brennan was beaten and murdered the night before. Lisa called the RCMP again at 5:01 p.m.
Soon after, someone else told the family about a car burning on the reserve that might be Brennan’s. Jared and Lisa rushed to the scene, where Lisa dodged the RCMP officers surrounding it to confirm her worst fears: the charred remains of their son were inside the burned vehicle.
In a news release issued late in the afternoon on May 11, Shellbrook RCMP said the detachment had received a report about the burning car at 10:13 a.m. on May 10. The release said an officer went to the scene, saw fire still burning in the bushes around the car, and left without searching the vehicle.
Officers did not return to the car until hours later, around 5:30 p.m., after someone called the detachment to say they believed there was a body in the vehicle. Officers went back to the scene, confirmed human remains were present and established a perimeter.
“All day my son’s body burned,” Lisa said through tears. “This is the worst mishandling of evidence, crucial, crucial evidence. Right away in the morning, my son’s body could have been preserved. I could have had more than ashes and bone. (The RCMP) could have had more evidence. But they didn’t go and do their job.”
The coroner’s office confirmed Monday that the remains in the vehicle were Brennan’s. The cause of his death has not been made public. RCMP say they are treating the death as suspicious.
RCMP spokesman Cpl. Rob King said the force is conducting an internal investigation into why the officer who went to the fire scene on Thursday morning did not see human remains in the vehicle.
“There’s a dozen reasons why he should have, a dozen potential reasons why he may not have seen it. There was a whole bunch of other stuff going on that day and then he left the scene,” King said.
He does not know if the results of the RCMP investigation into the incident will be made public, he said.
“It all depends on what the end results of the internal review are. We don’t usually go and make public what we do.”
King said “significant resources” went into the missing person and human remains investigations from the beginning and that the force is “committed to trying to find answers for the family.”
“This was not one that was just pushed on the back burner,” he said.
Brennan’s family held a funeral for him on Thursday. His ashes now sit in a golden urn on a table by the back door of the home where he grew up, surrounded by smiling photos of the six-foot-five football player. A golden urn for the family’s “golden child.”
“He was a kind, gentle person. He was loving,” Lisa says. “I loved everything he did and I was so proud of him.”
Brennan graduated high school last year and had been hoping to follow in his father’s footsteps as a carpenter. He was a formidable football player — big and fast — who played both offence and defence. He was humble and always helped opposing players up when he bowled them over, his family says. He had been planning to travel to Saskatoon to try out for the Hilltops. He loved his two younger brothers and two younger sisters dearly. He ate dinner with his family almost every night.
Jared and Lisa said gangs and drugs are prevalent on the reserve, but members of their family keep to themselves and do not interact with gang members.
They say they don’t know why anyone would want to hurt their son.
Jared said he always told Brennan he would be famous one day. He’s convinced that’s exactly what will happen now.
“I’m finding purpose in his death — and that’s for our people to be looked at as a people,” he said.
“When he’s long gone, at least he meant something, at least he stood for something, for our people. I always knew he was meant for something great, and this is it.”