The mother of a 14-year-old boy who was deemed to have accidentally drowned in a creek in Regina’s east end last May is still searching for more clarity.
Now she’s taking her efforts outside police headquarters.
Richelle Dubois’ son Haven died on May 20, 2015. The coroner’s report found drug use was a “significant contributing factor”. The toxicology report found the active components of marijuana.
But Dubois said she was “disgusted” with the coroner’s two-and-a-quarter page report. She wanted more answers from that along with the report from the Regina police investigation.
“I just want people to know that I’m out here and I’m going to continue to stay out here until I get some sort of answers that I haven’t received,” said Dubois, who’s vowing to stay in her van until she gets a meeting with police to go over their investigation.
“I want to make sure that they did their job right. I want to make sure that there’s nobody out there who thinks that they got away with murder. I need to know that they did their job right.”
Dubois claims she’s tried to arrange a meeting with police, but that’s been unsuccessful so far. She believes they don’t want to answer her questions and keep deferring her. On that front, Dubois outlined how she intends on filing a public complaint against police on the way she’s been given the runaround.
Deputy police Chief Dean Rae believes officers have conducted a thorough investigation in conjunction with the coroner. He said it’s not their practice to publicly release reports since they have to protect third-party individuals who provide information towards the case.
What they have done in the past, and what Rae is offering to do with Dubois and her family, is to arrange a meeting where a redacted version of the report be made available, with police there to answer any questions surrounding the investigation.
However, the deputy chief said he cannot provide a copy of the redacted report to Dubois.
Rae explained how there’s been a little bit of a delay since their legal counsel has been on holidays. Work is underway on editing the reports though, he clarified. He’s also insisting that even though the report has been concluded, anything new that Dubois raises can always be looked at closer.
“If there’s new pieces of information that can further the investigation we’re going to welcome those and we’ll look at those,” said Rae.
Dubois stated that if police did look at every possibility and the whole incident turned out to be just a horrible tragedy, then she’ll deal with it at that time. But for now she can’t let things go since she still has too many unanswered questions.