“Starlight Tours” - The Saskatoon freezing deaths
Reports of the practice date back to at least 1976. As of 2021, despite convictions for related offences, no Saskatoon police officer has been convicted specifically for having caused freezing death
The Saskatoon freezing deaths were a series murders involving Indigenous men and Saskatoon Police officers in the early 2000’s. The officers would arrest Indigenous people, usually men, for alleged drunkenness, allegedly sometimes without cause. The officers would then drive them to the outskirts of the city at night in the winter, take their clothing, and abandon them, leaving them stranded in sub-zero temperatures.
Reports of the practice date back to at least 1976. As of 2021, despite convictions for related offences, no Saskatoon police officer has been convicted specifically for having caused freezing deaths. The three known victims to have succumb to hypothermia are Rodney Naistus, Lawrence Wegner, and Neil Stonechild.
Timeline
An overview the events surrounding the death of Neil Stonechild and the subsequent inquiry.
Nov. 24, 1990 - Neil Stonechild(17) and Jason Roy leave a house party around midnight in temperatures around -25C.
Nov. 25, 1990 - Roy is stopped by constables Brad Senger and Larry Hartwig. States they have Stonechild in the back seat, and he is bloodied, screaming for help and yelling that the police were going to kill him.
Nov. 29, 1990 – Stonechild’s frozen body is discovered. Sgt. Keith Jarvis of the morality unit is assigned to investigate.
Dec. 3, 1990 - Stonechild’s funeral is held. Family observe two parallel cuts on the bridge of his nose.
Dec. 5, 1990 - Jarvis concludes the Stonechild file. His report doesn’t address the missing shoe, how he walked nine km in a snowstorm, or how he incurred cuts on his nose.
Roy’s statement that he saw Stonechild in the back of Senger’s and Hartwig’s cruiser is excluded from the report.
March 4, 1991 – It is reported that Stonechild’s family disagree with Jarvis’s report and suspect foul play.
June 4, 1997 – A fictional article in the Saskatoon Sun, by constable Brian Trainor, describes two cops who pick up a drunk and leave him outside the city.
1998 (exact date unkown) - The original file investigating Neil Stonechild’s death is destroyed by the department during a routine purging of old files.
Jan. 29, 2000 - The body of Indigenous man, Rodney Naistus, is discovered on the city outskirts.
Feb. 3, 2000 – Another Indigenous man, Lawrence Wegner, has his frozen body is discovered in the same area. Aboriginal man Darrell Night tells police that two officers abandoned him in the same area on a recent cold night.
Feb. 22, 2000 - Reports surface that connects Night’s allegations with Stonechild’s death, nearly a decade earlier.
Sept. 20, 2001 - Two police officers who admitted to abandoning Darrell Night in freezing temperatures are fired.
Feb. 20, 2003 – A public Inquiry is announced into Stonechild’s death.
Sept. 8, 2003 - Commission begins, headed by commissioner Justice David Wright.
Jan. 9, 2004 - Police officials announce that all city cruisers will be GPS equipped.
May 18, 2004 - Saskatoon police admit that the 1990 investigation into Stonechild’s death was inadequate, former police chief Russell Sabo apologizes to Stonechild’s family.
Oct. 26, 2004 - The Stonechild inquiry finds Stonechild was in the custody of Senger and Hartwig on the night he died, and that injuries on his nose were likely made by handcuffs.
November 2004 - Senger and Hartwig are fired.
June 19, 2008 - Senger and Hartwig’s appeal is denied.
Dec. 18, 2008 - Senger’s and Hartwig’s applications to appeal denied. Neither will ever spend a day in jail. Both deny involvement to this day.
Jim Maddin was on the Saskatoon police force for 25 years. Now he sits on city council.
"If somebody asked me does this happen. I couldn't look them in the eye and say absolutely no, it's never happened; never will happen. I couldn't say that," Maddin says. "General talk, discussion, locker room, coffee talk, what have you. Reference made to that. I've heard stories of people where this has happened to in other cities. Who's to say it didn't happen here? I can't say it didn't happen, but I can also say that I never observed it personally at all. And at no time when I was in charge of officers on the street, at no time was it ever brought to my attention." Maddin
"Officers, I think, can tend to get frustrated with it, sure because they don't tend to see the system actually contributing to the solution of the problem," Maddin says. "It's just a simple temporary fix to pick up the intoxicated person, get them out of the public view or off the public street until such time they're sobered up to better care for themselves and then release them back, only to repeat it again. Sometimes in a very short time -- a matter of hours." (Brass, 2004)
Darren Grimes