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Hilary Bonnell's tragedy gripped N.B.
Friday January 1st, 2010
Search for missing 16-year-old ended in heartbreak for family
BY KRIS MCDAVID
Times & Transcript ,Moncton, New Brunswick
http://timestranscript.canadaeast.com/newstoday/article/906736Hilary Bonnell did what many teenagers do when those precious last days of summer vacation tick down before returning to school: she went to a party with friends.
Hilary was just days away from returning to school at Miramichi Valley High School and even had an early morning back-to-school shopping spree planned with her mother the morning after the party.
She had spent the summer living with her aunt to be able to spend time with her friends in Esgenoopetitj First Nation about 30 minutes northeast of Miramichi.
Pamela Fillier, Hilary's mother, said that her daughter had called her just after 3 a.m. to check in.
Hilary, according to Fillier, declined an offer to be picked up at the party and instead confirmed the two would link up later that morning for the planned shopping trip.
Fillier said her daughter told her, "I love you mommy," and then hung up the phone; this was the last time Pamela Fillier would hear her daughter's voice.
A few hours later Hilary, according to her cousin Haylie Bonnell, caught a ride from a friend to the nearby 4D's convenience store on Route 11, where RCMP later confirmed she was recorded on video surveillance camera -- and then she vanished.
Her mother, father, stepfather, friends and family fretted through an agonizing 24 hours on Saturday with no sign of the bubbly 16-year-old, and then knowing something wasn't right, filed a missing person's report Monday evening.
And with several community members already having launched a search party, a police bulletin wasn't posted to the RCMP 'J' Division website until four days later on Tuesday, Sept. 8.
When asked about the apparent lack of a swift response, then-RCMP spokesman Sgt. Claude Tremblay said, "because it's a 16-year-old kid and we don't do that for 24 hours," referring to the police bulletin.
Tremblay was then told that the girl was officially reported missing by her mother on Monday after disappearing Saturday morning after coming home from a party, meaning RCMP knew about her disappearance of longer than 24 hours.
He said he "didn't look at it as very important" because the issuance of a press release is the responsibility of the local detachment, while adding that "it's not up to me, buddy."
At that point Hilary was missing for well over 24 hours, but sadly, none of this would matter in the end.
District 8 RCMP confirmed that Bonnell was last spotted on a surveillance camera at the Four D's convenience store at the intersection of Route 11 and Micmac Road at about 7 a.m. Saturday.
In the days and weeks that followed, planes soared overhead, the aboriginal fisheries guardians led search parties that scoured the woods near Esgenoopetitj, and a determined mother who knew full-well her daughter hadn't run away from home, was right there with them.
As September gave way to October and October to November, police insisted that the 'pieces of the puzzle' were beginning to come together.
All the while, Fillier and her husband Fred, sleep-deprived and emotionally-drained, were driving all around the region chasing down leads in a dark green Chevrolet Silverado with Hilary's missing person's bulletin plastered on either side of the truck cap.
Not once did they ever give up hope that their 'diamond' would come home.
But then, on Nov. 14, Hilary's family got the news they had been dreading since the ordeal began -- police discovered human remains buried down a steep ravine deep in the woods about 30 minutes outside of Tabusintac.
Fortin stressed to the Esgenoopetitj community that nobody could have done anything to prevent the tragedy that unfolded, adding that the investigation was one of the most complex RCMP had ever encountered.
"There's nothing anybody could have done to change the outcome, and a lot of people in the community are kind of feeling the burden of 'maybe if I had have done this or done that,'" Fortin said.
"But people did an incredible job, and that location was totally covered with bushes; the community should not feel any regret or doubt themselves, because what they did was incredible -- Hilary Bonnell will not be a statistic."
Over 500 people attended a simple funeral at St. Anne's Roman Catholic Church, including Lt.-Gov. Graydon Nicholas and First Nation chiefs from across Atlantic Canada.
On Dec. 9, RCMP announced they had charged 29-year-old
Curtis Wayne Bonnell, Hilary's cousin, with first-degree murder in the death of Hilary Bonnell.
Curtis Bonnell made his first appearance in Miramichi provincial court on Dec. 21, and will re-appear on Jan. 18 so that he can obtain a lawyer.
Nobody else is being sought in connection with her death.
Pamela Fillier said she will be at every one of Bonnell's court appearances.
