WINNIPEG — The mother of an Indigenous woman who disappeared in 2008 says the RCMP have failed her.
Bernice Catcheway told the national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women that she and her family have spent years doing their own investigative work to try to find her daughter.
Jennifer Catcheway was last heard from in Grand Rapids, Man., on the morning of her 18th birthday, when she called her mother and said she was heading to the family's home in Portage la Prairie.
Bernice Catcheway says she went to the RCMP detachment a few days later to report her daughter missing and a Mountie told her not to worry because her daughter was probably out drinking.
She says a woman told her later on that she saw men burning clothes in a field, which she reported to the RCMP, but an officer told Catcheway the witness was a drunk.
The inquiry is concluding five days of hearings in Winnipeg, and has added three days of hearings in Norway House, Man., in November.
