Family searches for clues months after 24-yr-aged Cree woman vanishes in downtown Vancouver

Sheila Poorman has spent six months taping posters up across Vancouver, hoping someone also can know why her daughter vanished after leaving a downtown apartment. 

She wonders how no person also can like seen Chelsea Poorman, a 24-yr-aged Cree woman with round cheeks, friendly brown eyes and a noticeable limp, depart an apartment at Granville and Davie streets around tiresome evening on Sept. 6 when those streets are lined with closed-circuit video cameras.

All she is conscious of is that Chelsea met up with a recent man after she spent the evening along with her sister.

Beyond that, she says neither her family nor police like any mountainous leads as to the identification of that man or what came about next. The unanswered questions had been agonizing. 

“Her sisters, myself, we depart out her dearly and we perfect desire her house and we perfect desire her real,” Poorman stated.

“She would no longer perfect no longer come house.”

The family has employed a non-public investigator. Poorman continues to circulate looking for her daughter herself on tale of she worries police didn’t act snappy ample on the time of her disappearance.

Chelsea is vulnerable, she stated. She has a brain injury and her arm is completely bent from a automobile accident. Poorman fears someone also can like taken perfect thing about her kind and trusting personality.

She used to be reported missing to the Vancouver Police Division days after she disappeared, however Poorman says she used to be disappointed police didn’t reveal a public missing person’s examine till 10 days later.

Police stated in December that her her case used to be transferred to the homicide fragment however is being handled as a missing individuals case that requires extra sources.

When requested this week whether the case is believed to be a homicide, police stated they’d no updates, however that detectives are tranquil working on it. 

‘It’s families … which can perchance perchance perchance be always doing the groundwork’

Lorelei Williams, a former females’s co-ordinator on the Vancouver Aboriginal Neighborhood Policing Centre Society, is working with Poorman to organize a vigil stroll on March 19.

VACPC exists to contend with social justice issues and originate a more in-depth relationships between the Indigenous community and the police.

Williams says families of missing and murdered Indigenous females and girls (MMIWG) most continuously come to the group on tale of they attain no longer know where else to reveal for attend. She feels there’s continuously much less investigative effort made when Indigenous females trek missing when compared to assorted females.

“They [families of missing women] if truth be told feel bask in the police are no longer doing ample they most continuously attain no longer know what else to attain,” Williams stated.

“I find that it’s families and their supports which can perchance perchance perchance be always doing the groundwork. They’re always searching on tale of that’s their missing loved one.”

In June, a CBC News glimpse found that there’s tranquil no uniform or co-ordinated formula amongst police forces handling circumstances of missing or murdered Indigenous females in Canada, a yr after a nationwide inquiry into the reveal used to be completed. 

COVID-19 has exacerbated violence against females.

Williams says she has seen an increase in violent incidents in Vancouver.

She feels police forces had been behind to interchange and contend with the realm of violence against females successfully across Canada, which has intended communities like had to plan their agree with sources to guard each assorted.

“MMIWG is our emergency neatly before the pandemic and it’s worse now,” Williams stated. 

“We are living in a racist nation and systemic racism is there. It’s miles veritably there, it’s there to on the present time. Nothing has changed.”

Williams says she’s pissed off that no video recordings like been launched that would possibly perchance perchance also attend find Chelsea.

Sheila Poorman says her daughter, who would now be 25, loved animals, vogue and music. She used to be friendly, humorous, and caring, and had desires of attending film faculty. 

Chelsea used to be always looking out for others. Now, Poorman hopes someone is looking out for her. 

“If anyone has seen her or if anyone has heard anything about Chelsea or you realize, anything, I perfect interrogate, to phone the tip line,” Poorman stated.

“We perfect desire Chelsea house. We desire to know that she’s OK. We desire to know that she’s real.”

Anybody with information about her disappearance is requested to contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.