Seventeen-year-old Fonassa Lynn Louise Bruyere was from Manitoba’s Sagkeeng First Nation in Canada. According to her relatives, she was a cheerful young woman, always smiling and laughing, and extremely close with her family.
On August 9th, 2007, Fonassa—who allegedly made her living as a sex worker—was spotted getting into a green, two-door truck with tinted windows. She was never seen alive again.
Her panicked family reported her disappearance right away but later stated that the police had been no help, likely because the victim was a sex worker and an Indigenous woman. Fonassa’s relatives looked for the missing girl themselves, scouring the area where she was last seen and papering Winnipeg with flyers.
Almost a month after Fonassa had vanished, authorities turned up at the home of her parents and stated that her body had been found just at the city limits. She had been stabbed more than a dozen times.
Fonassa’s grandmother claimed afterward that the murdered girl had been acting a little bit strange in the days before she went missing, being extra affectionate with her family and asking what they would do if she died. It’s not clear whether Fonassa knew she was in danger.
The slaying was one of many such killings of Indigenous women in Canada and remains unsolved as of October 2024.
Crime Immemorial 