McDougall Church, Morley, Alberta (note the peaks of the Canadian Rockies in the background)
The Morley Flat in the Alberta foothills, with Mount Yamnuska in the background
Posted on 01/04/2006 8:18:02 PM PST by Stoat
Brittany Bearspaw, an accomplished 16-year-old with dreams of becoming a lawyer, was killed Sunday morning on the highway near her hometown of Morley, west of Calgary. Police believe she was then run over by more vehicles. "That's the part that really gets to us. How can you not feel running over a person?" said John Sedo, Brittany's father. "If even one of them had pulled over — but both of them took off."
Cochrane RCMP received several reports, starting at around 7:20 a.m. Sunday, that a person was walking in traffic near the Morley exit. "We got a few calls from people saying that they had almost hit this person," said Cpl. Roger Waidson.
When the responding officer arrived 15 minutes later, he found a man walking by the side of the road and pulled over to speak to him. The man had seen what looked like a body on the road and had been trying to prevent more cars from hitting it.
"He saw her on the road and saw at least three vehicles drive over her," Waidson said. "He was quite shaken by what he had seen. He didn't want to move her, so he was trying to stop the cars and get someone to help." Bearspaw's family described her as an avid athlete and mentor to her four younger siblings. She had just been accepted to Canmore Collegiate High School.
They returned Monday to the place where she was hit to gather pieces of the cars that hit her, clothing and any other debris from the incident. Everything was to be placed in a bag and buried with Bearspaw, helping to release her spirit to the heavens, said her father. "We went this morning and did a prayer," said Sedo. "We had an elder come with us.
"But even after we bury her ... how can we live life when two people who drove over her are having a gay old time in the mountains?" Sedo said the family has been through this before.
Five years ago, Brittany's second cousin, Oliver Rollinmud, was killed along the same stretch of highway by a hit-and-run driver. No one was ever charged in Rollinmud's death. Sedo and his wife, Geraldine Bearspaw, want nothing more than to have the drivers who hit their daughter come forward and accept responsibility.
"What I want is closure. I want these people to know what they've taken from us," he said. "I was proud of her all the time. She impressed me. I was always amazed."
But they drive so darn fast through Upstate New York on their way south, I could see them not even noticing a thump in the road.
Morley is located along the Bow River Valley in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, and the backdrop of the area is stunning. Much of the area lies within the Morley Native Reserve, which had been the site of numerous crimes, strange murder/suicides, etc. back a few years ago.
Based on her name, it sounds like this girl lived on the reserve, too.
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This is a tragic story. What caught my eye, though, is that the family went back to the scene and collected parts from autos that "Had run over her". HUH! I should think that the police would have collected this stuff as evidence to use in catching the people who ran over her.
Ping.
I thought Canada was full of leftists who care a lot more for humans than those non-caring conservatives...
Course two out of three cars could have been from the U.S. Heh heh heh...
Agreed, very strange. My father was a policeman back in the "old days" and it was common practice to take paint samples off of cars to help identify the other impacting vehicle, even if there wasn't a fatality involved.
I'm astonished that the whole section of roadway wasn't closed down immediately and the entire area gone over with a fine-tooth comb in an effort to find evidence.
I'm an EMS worker here in the USA, and I'm accustomed to parking my rig far enough away to avoid any chance of disturbing a potential crime scene investigation, even if no fatality is involved.
It's quite baffling to me as to why the RCMP avoided doing what I consider to be an extremely basic and time-proven bit of police work.
Much of the area lies within the Morley Native Reserve, which had been the site of numerous crimes, strange murder/suicides, etc. back a few years ago.
Well, natives are famous for drinking a lot. What a heartless thing to do though.
McDougall Church, Morley, Alberta (note the peaks of the Canadian Rockies in the background)
The Morley Flat in the Alberta foothills, with Mount Yamnuska in the background
I thought the Canadians loved each other more than we Americans love each other? Or is that just when shooting is involved?
This is terrible. Remains. Ugh. And so young too.
Nice, a bit isolated, though.
No one seems to have noticed or commented on this staggering piece of information. The parent(s) of a sixteen-year-old girl let her stay out all night at a party and then walk home alone? Interesting attitude toward parenting. They can cry and say they're grieved at her death, but they have some responsibility in it.
It looks that way in the photos, but it's not as remote as it seems. It's an empty area because it's inside the reserve, but it's only about a 40-minute drive from there to downtown Calgary and a 40-minute drive to the resort town of Banff in the Rockies.
I see.
There's a gravel road running parallel to the Trans-Canada Highway in that area, and as I drove through the blinding snow in a mild panic when I came upon a strange scene. I could see a pickup truck driving pretty fast along the parallel road through deep snow drifts. A couple of natives from the Morley reserve were standing in the back of it yelling out at something behind the truck, and when I looked back I could see another guy who was being towed behind on a pair of skis. I've never seen anything like that. LOL.
Pretty wild I might add, lol.
Indians are generally disliked, publicly defamed, kept out of work and away from other people in Canada. It's not like the USA now at all, where a great number of our population are part Indian and away from reservations.
That's very sad, I had no idea. Do you think that this attitude would manifest itself in literally hundreds of drivers driving past an Indian GIRL'S body on the highway without even bothering to stop? (I bolded her gender because I am of that old, discredited school that believes women are the Crown of Creation and the Light of the Universe, and deserve every possible bit of adoration and respect at all times)
Do you think that it would also manifest itself in the RCMP officers doing what appears to be a breathtakingly substandard and unprofessional "investigation" of the crime scene?
Sorry if I seem naive about Canada.....I've made it a point to avoid visiting Canada for a great many years because it seems that many of Canada's people and Government officials have not been terribly congenial toward us Yanks.
Thanks for the nice (pro-fem) thought. We appreciate you guys too.
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