Family of woman who vanished after sending text still has hope
Inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women sparks memories of Lisa
Lisa Marie Young was a fiercely independent young woman. She liked water-skiing, swimming, rollerblading and going out with her friends in Nanaimo, B.C.
She was a vegetarian and liked “anything healthy,” including tofu and the stir-fried rice her mother, Joanne Young, would make for her. Lisa Marie was a hard worker and had a hard head, her mom says.
“Her inner strength was totally awesome,” said Young.
At the age of 21, in the early morning of June 30, 2002, she went missing in Nanaimo.
Up until then, that night had been a good one, says Dallas Hulley, who had been celebrating his 21st birthday. He was the last of Lisa Marie’s friends to hear from her. Now, the night — and a chilling last text mes- sage he said she sent him — haunt him.
After leaving the party, Hulley said she sent a text to him saying: “Come get me they won’t let me leave.”
“That was the last contact. I never saw her again,” he said.
Const. Gary O’Brien of the Nanaimo RCMP said the last Lisa Marie was heard of was when she left the party to get food with a man she and her friends met that night. Though the man she was with was later identified by police (as confirmed by Nanaimo RCMP to the Star) and a number of people were questioned by police, no arrests have been made in connection with her disappearance. Police say her case remains unsolved and is part of the RCMP’s database of more than 1,181 missing and murdered indigenous women.
Const. O’Brien said the case is still very active and is considered an “unsolved missing (case), believed to be a homicide.” He said as many resources as possible were devoted to it from early on, but wouldn’t comment on whether there had been any new developments. When Lisa Marie didn’t come home or answer her phone later that day, her mother knew something was “really, really wrong.”
Lisa Marie was said to be a young woman at a crossroads the summer she went missing. She was about to move into a new apartment the next day and start a new job at a local call centre that week.
Hulley described Lisa Marie as outgoing, confident and bubbly. “She was somebody you noticed right away, at a party or a gathering, or whatever it was,” he said. “She just had a light about her.”
The city of Nanaimo has become a series of landmarks for Lisa Marie’s mother: the park by the ocean where her daughter enjoyed playing as a child, her old street, the places she used to rollerblade downtown.
“I can’t really go anywhere without thinking about her . . . she loved so many things,” said Young. “Even now, we have hope.”
On Wednesday, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett announced the federal government would launch its inquiry into the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women in September, which some say could include as many as 4,000 women in the country.
Young says the growing awareness of the issue has brought her daugh- ter’s story back to the surface and allowed her to meet families in similar situations.
“It’s just so heartbreaking because you know exactly how they feel about their missing loved ones,” says Young, who is a member of the Tla-oqui-aht First Nation, but lives in Nanaimo.
The efforts of Lisa’s parents, Young and her husband, Don, to tell that story resonated as far as Australia recently, where true crime podcast Case File devoted an episode to it.
Family members and activists have called for more to be done to bring closure in other unsolved cases of missing and murdered indigenous women, often decrying a lack of police engagement.
Dawn Lavell-Harvard, president of the Native Women’s Association of Canada, is optimistic the inquiry will explore whether unsolved cases were investigated by police “to the best of their ability,” among other systemic issues that could lead to the perpetuation of violence against indigenous women.