RCMP blasted for failures investigating missing woman
Amanda Michayluk’s final moments were spent walking alone in the cold and snow through a Saskatchewan field as her family anxiously waited for an RCMP search and rescue team that would never arrive.
A scathing report from the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP says officers responding to calls for help from Michayluk’s family in 2019 had tunnel vision, relied on stereotypes and did an inadequate ground search.
The decision not to call in search and rescue was described as “unconscionable.”
“Although it will never be known for sure, it is possible that she might have been found alive were it not for the RCMP’s failures in this case,” says the report from the RCMP’s civilian watchdog.
The partially redacted report, made public under freedom of information laws, details at least 36 hours of serious missteps by Mounties that began with a report from Michayluk’s family that she had disappeared near Maidstone, a small town in northwestern Saskatchewan.
Michayluk, 34, had been out collecting firewood with her father when their vehicle got stuck in snow. When it started to get late and dark, Michayluk attempted to walk home, which was about two or three kilometres away, to get help.
Her father eventually got the truck unstuck and drove to the house. His daughter wasn’t there. He drove back to the area he’d last seen her and tried several times to follow the path she had taken, but it was impassible due to large snowdrifts. The father called 911 and asked for a search and rescue team. He said snowmobiles would be needed to get to the area. At no point would a rescue team arrive.
An RCMP officer attended the scene not long after and found several sets of foot tracks. Another officer also arrived but the commission’s report found they did an inadequate ground search. One officer found a set of boot prints that ended at tire tracks. The commission’s report says the obsession with this detail would have officers unreasonably conclude Michayluk was picked up by a passing motorist.
The report found officers relied on racial stereotypes and unsupported assumptions and noted in their reports that Michayluk had an “active social life at the bar.” Family made it clear to officers that Michayluk would not take off and leave her two young children behind.
“As the investigation went on, the subject RCMP members continued to flounder, failing to communicate effectively, or to respond appropriately,” the report says.
The officers returned to the family’s home and told them arrangements had been made for a ground search in the morning, “even though they did not arrange for any further search,” the report noted. “This was an egregious dereliction of their duties.”
The report says that in the following hours, officers and their supervisors used their time to call Michayluk’s friends and attend places she worked. The did shoddy paperwork, the report noted, and didn’t follow the RCMP’s own missing person protocols. Some officers made no work on the missing person’s case at all. One corporal noted how he didn’t think Michayluk was lost.
Meanwhile, a volunteer search party unaffiliated with the RCMP began a search using snowmobiles and a drone. They found her body in a field a couple of kilometres from the firewood site. Her cause of death was hypothermia.
The report found officers relied on racial stereotypes and unsupported assumptions and noted in their reports that Amanda Michayluk had an ‘active social life at the bar’