When Natasha Harrison’s 20-year-old daughter Tatyanna stopped answering her texts, Harrison drove from Langley to Vancouver to file a missing person’s report and search the streets herself. For months, she combed downtown Vancouver, checking out women’s shelters and SROs and stopping strangers on the sidewalk. Send any leads and tips to the Vancouver Police Department. “I found the friends and I found the ex-boyfriends,” she said, speaking from her sunny backyard in Langley. “But I could never find her.” On May 2, Richmond RCMP found the remains of a woman in an older 40-foot yacht docked at a marina in the 6900 block of Graybar Road in Richmond. But although Harrison had provided police with a DNA sample, three months later, on August 5, police confirmed the body was her daughter’s. WATCHES | Natasha Harrison questions the circumstances of her daughter’s death.
Mother says police failed to properly investigate daughter’s death
Tatyanna Harrison’s mother, Natasha, says she is not satisfied with police’s determination that her daughter’s death was not suspicious after her remains were found on a 40-foot yacht in Richmond. A coroner’s report found that Tatiana, who is Cree and Métis on her father’s side, died of “fentanyl toxicity.” Harrison said her daughter had suffered from addiction since 2021 and had long worried about her safety. However, she said she is haunted by the details of how her daughter’s body was found and was not satisfied that police determined her death was not suspicious. “You find her wearing just a shirt and no clothes — no pants, no underwear, no socks, no shoes, and you call it non-suspicious and you don’t make her a rape kit?” he said. “What happened to her? Did someone keep her there against her will? You know, I can accept her dying of an overdose. It’s a lot easier than accepting what she really looks like.” “Since he could talk, he hasn’t stopped. Her words never stopped. She just literally had everyone wrapped around her finger because she’s so sweet and loving,” Harrison said of her daughter, Tatianna, pictured. (Vancouver Police Department) Harrison said she has no idea how her daughter ended up on a boat that is not accessible by public transportation, without her clothes and no personal identification. No drugs were found on the boat with her, and the medical examiner’s report did not determine how the drugs that killed her were ingested. “You can’t tell me how he got in and out of a 24-hour surveillance yard with a $40 million yacht?” he said. “You don’t take your clothes off yourself and overdose on a boat. None of that makes any sense.”
The case went between jurisdictions
Harrison said she is appalled that it took so long to identify her daughter’s remains and that there were wide discrepancies in the description of her body and her age. But she said her concerns about the investigation into her disappearance began long before her daughter was found. Harrison said Tatiana moved from Surrey to Vancouver in early February with her boyfriend. When Tatiana stopped responding to her texts, Harrison filed a missing person’s report with Vancouver police on May 3. However, he said valuable time was lost as the VPD transferred the file to Surrey RCMP, where Tatianna previously lived. Police agencies are required to follow clear provincial standards for missing persons cases, which require that a missing person investigation be conducted by the police agency in the jurisdiction in which the missing person was last seen. The VPD finally began its investigation 20 days later when investigators discovered evidence that Tatiana had used a bank machine in Vancouver in late March and eventually turned the file over to their major crimes unit. Richmond RCMP, the detachment handling the case after Harrison’s death, has since closed the case. “In sensitivity, we have discussed our investigation and the results with the next of kin of the deceased. Our investigation is complete. If new evidence comes to light, we will re-open our investigation,” a statement from the outlet read in part. Harrison said her handling of the case reminded her of the mistakes in the police investigation into serial killer Robert Pickton, where multiple police agencies were investigating the same crimes. “How do you close the file without talking to the VPD? Have we learned anything from Pickton? That’s not working,” he said. “It drives me crazy to watch this game over and over again.”
“They are the same way”
Tatyanna Harrison’s death is the fourth case of a young Indigenous woman found dead in the Lower Mainland in the spring and summer of 2022. On May 6, the remains of Chelsea Poorman were identified after they were found in a Shaughnessy mansion after months of desperate searching by her family. The case was quickly ruled non-suspicious. On May 1, the body of 14-year-old Noelle O’Soup was found at an SRO on Heatley Avenue along with the remains of another woman. She too had died months earlier. On July 30, the body of 24-year-old Kwemcxenalqs Manuel-Gottfriedson was found a few blocks away from the same Downtown Eastside SRO. Few details have been released about her death, but police are continuing to investigate. Relatives of Tatyanna Harrison, an Indigenous woman found dead in Richmond, are pictured making ritual objects for an upcoming memorial service. (Ben Nelms/CBC) “They’re in the same way, in the same situation at the same time. It’s like suddenly all their bodies are showing up,” said Harrison, who has regular conversations with the Porman and O’Soup families and is planning a joint vigil for the four women on next Saturday. “We brush all this stuff under the rug like these girls aren’t being taken advantage of.” Harrison remembers Tatiana as a chubby baby and later as a chatty, bright child who learned to read unusually early and could often be found devouring several fantasy novels in a day. “Ever since she could talk, she didn’t stop. Her words never stopped. She just literally had everyone wrapped around her finger because she’s so sweet and loving,” he said. “She deserved a life and we deserve to have her.”
