Accused in Fontaine homicide to appear in court Tuesday

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/12/2015 (3588 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Tina Fontaine was allegedly killed “on or about” August 10, 2014 – two days after the 15-year-old was last seen and one day after she was reported missing.

Police didn’t announce a specific timeline last week when revealing they had arrested a suspect in the high-profile homicide. But court documents that lay out the second-degree murder charge against 53-year-old Raymond Cormier show when investigators believe the slaying occurred.

No other details, including how police believe she was killed, are contained in the court file.

Cormier is expected to make his first court appearance in Winnipeg on Tuesday morning.

This morning, a bail court put over Cormier’s appearance until then to give his newly appointed lawyer, Pam Smith, a chance to review the case.

Cormier was flown in from Vancouver over the weekend.

Fontaine, 15, who was originally from Sagkeeng First Nation but had lived for a time in Winnipeg, went missing on Aug. 9, 2014. Her body, discovered inside a bag, was pulled from the Red River on Aug. 17, 2014, triggering a 16-month hunt for an accused in the homicide.

That search culminated in an arrest and a police press conference that went national last Friday.

Across Canada, Fontaine’s death brought home the impact of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Canada in a way that the public hadn’t felt before.

Fontaine was described as “just a little girl” and the manner of her death and the condition of her remains were called “horrendous” by Winnipeg’s lead detective on the arrest.

At the time she disappeared, Fontaine was a ward of Child and Family Services, in Winnipeg. She’d gone missing from a hotel where child welfare workers had placed her nearly three weeks before her remains were discovered.