Phoenix case spurred change

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This article was published 29/04/2016 (3457 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The June 2005 murder of five-year-old Phoenix Sinclair led to a pivotal provincial inquiry and a number of reviews of the child-welfare system in Manitoba.

Her body was buried in the woods near the garbage dump on the Fisher River First Nation, about 200 kilometres north of Winnipeg. Her remains were found in March 2006.

Phoenix’s killing remained a secret for nine months and only surfaced when a relative came forward to police and documented alleged abuse that ended with death. Phoenix had an extensive history with Child and Family Services, but her case file was closed in March 2005, three months before her death.

Phoenix’s mother, Samantha Kematch, and Karl McKay, her former common-law husband, were both convicted in December 2008 of first-degree murder in her death.

As the case came to light in 2006, a court-ordered ban prevented details of the hearing from being published. The RCMP did not release the cause of her death.

But in March 2006, the Free Press reported RCMP believed the five-year-old girl had been locked in an animal cage, repeatedly shot with a BB gun and deprived of food and water in the horrific weeks leading up to her June 2005 slaying. Court documents later confirmed the information.

Billie Schibler, the province’s children’s advocate at the time, said at the time she could not comment specifically on Phoenix’s case, but said all child deaths were automatically reviewed by a committee including representatives from the city’s police services and the province’s child-protection branch, as well as the office of the province’s chief medical examiner. An assessment of Child and Family Services was mandatory under the province’s Fatalities Inquiries Act in situations where a deceased child was in the care of CFS or had a parent or guardian receiving services from an agency under the CFS Act.