Family fears woman dead

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This article was published 21/11/2010 (5711 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Family and friends of a missing 20-year-old woman are worried she won’t be coming home alive.

Amber Rose Marie Guiboche, 20, was last seen 11 days ago getting into a red truck near William Avenue and Isabel Street at about 11:45 p.m. Guiboche’s best friend, Roxy Bruyere, said her friend was drunk at the time she went missing, and had been visiting at her house before taking off on foot to hail a cab and head back north to her boyfriend’s College Avenue home.

Minutes later, another friend glimpsed Guiboche about 500 metres away, climbing into a red truck in a William Street back alley. She hasn’t been heard from since.

“She’s the best friend I’ve ever had. I love her so much,” said Roxy Bruyere, who cried Friday as she described the disappearance of her best friend.

Saturday, Guiboche’s brother Kyle Kematch and sister Ashley Geddes began putting up posters about Guiboche around the city.

“We’re praying for the best, but we’re preparing for the worst,” said Geddes.

For Bruyere, Guiboche’s disappearance is doubly heart-breaking.

On her leg she has a tattoo with the name of her formerly close friend and late cousin Fonassa Bruyere, a sexually exploited youth who was last seen getting into a green two-door truck on Aikins Street in August 2007. Her body was found three weeks later near Ritchie Street and Mollard Road in northwest Winnipeg, leading police to call her death a homicide.

They have never told her family or the public how she died. Police have never arrested the person or people who killed Fonassa Bruyere.

Her death was part of what caused the province and police to create a joint RCMP and Winnipeg Police Service task force last year to review unsolved deaths of women.

Roxy Bruyere said Friday she had the same terrible feeling Guiboche was hurt as when Bruyere went missing.

“I should have f ing told her to sleep over,” she said.

Family of Guiboche said the young woman had a high-risk lifestyle, and she’d been in trouble with the law before.

Family said during her teen years Guiboche would run away but that behaviour had stopped as an adult.

They said they desperately want her to be all right and aren’t sure why she was at William and Isabel.

“I don’t know what she was doing there,” said Kematch. “It’s not a very good spot for girls.”

Police intially released a missing persons alert for Guiboche this past Wednesday, one week after she was last seen.

By Saturday, police sent out a more detailed description of Guiboche and said family and investigators are “very concerned” about her whereabouts.

“We have nothing to support… that we’re dealing with foul play. She can’t be located right now,” said Winnipeg Police Service Const. Jason Michalyshen.

“We’re doing everything in our power to try to locate her.”

Investigators from the missing persons unit took a cellphone Guiboche had used but wasn’t carrying at the time of her disappearance, said her brother.

He said investigators also took two books that listed the phone numbers of Bruyere’s contacts.

Michalyshen said investigators have no reason to believe Guiboche is in danger, but are concerned, since her complete lack of contact is “very much out of character.”

Guiboche, who’s 5-5 and 105 pounds, has a fair complexion and hazel eyes.

She has a thin build and often wears her long brown hair in a ponytail.

When she went missing, she wore skinny jeans, a white Adidas hoodie with gold stripes and pink and white skater sneakers.

Bruyere, who’s been interviewed by police, said officers still want her to do a video-taped statement on the events leading up to her friend’s disappearance.

Guiboche had gone to see an uncle late Wednesday afternoon in the company of two male friends.

By the time she showed up at Bruyere’s Wednesday night, she was with one of those friends, but Bruyere said he left the home minutes before Guiboche took off to go find a cab.

Police said did not say Saturday Guiboche was involved in the sex trade, but did say she may have gotten into a vehicle at about 11:45 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 10. Friends and family said despite her erratic lifestyle, Guiboche called her boyfriend and her family regularly to check in.

Anyone with information on Guiboche’s whereabouts can call police at 986-4510 or the non-emergency line at 986-6222. They can also call Child Find Manitoba at 1-800-532-9135.

gabrielle.giroday@freepress.mb.ca