Felicia Velvet Solomon
Feliicia Velvet Solomon
Felicia Solomon was born on July 21, 1986 at Norway House Cree Nation in northern Manitoba. She was the oldest of six children and a cousin of the late Helen Betty Osborne.
As a teenager, Felicia Solomon lived with her family in Winnipeg where she attended high school. On the evening of March 25, 2003, the 16-year-old did not return home and did not call. Her mother says she phoned the police that evening and again the next day, but the police did not investigate.
On March 27th, Solomon’s mother learned that her brother had died. Although she was worried that she had still not heard from her daughter, she felt she had to return to Norway House for her brother’s funeral. She returned to Winnipeg early on the morning of March 30th and called the police right away. The police did not come to her home until 1:00 a.m. that night. She describes the officers as being inattentive, laughing, and acting rudely. The officers filled out a missing person report at that time but told her that according to policy they would have to wait 48 hours before they could do anything.
A Winnipeg police spokesperson has told Amnesty that the force responds to missing persons reports based on an assessment of the risk to the missing person and does not have a policy of waiting 48 hours, as many in the public believe. Nonetheless, the family ended up making their own missing persons posters and began putting them up all over Winnipeg. They say they received no help from the police and that the police made no effort to publicize the disappearance. According to the family, the police simply told them “to keep looking around for her.”
A little over a month after Felicia Solomon disappeared, the family contacted their Chief and Council at Norway House. One of the councilors, Mike Muswegon, contacted Child Find, a national non-governmental organization based in Winnipeg, which agreed to produce posters. Muswagon also contacted the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, the political body representing First Nations in Manitoba, and arranged a press conference.
On June 11th 2003 Winnipeg police river patrol officers found a severed thigh near the water’s edge. On June 16th, a man who was walking along the north bank of the river spotted an arm that was severed near the shoulder. In October, DNA testing confirmed that the body parts were those of Felicia Solomon. The rest of her remains were never found. As of September 2009, her murder remains unsolved. Felicia Solomon’s family remains frustrated by the attitudes of the police. The family believes they were treated differently than non-Indigenous people would have been. One of the family members commented, “When we listened to the news, when something happened to someone else’s child, whether they are white or from any other kind of race or culture, they do everything. It’s completely different when an Indian person goes missing. We see that.”
Family members also take issue with the stated reluctance of the police they met with to take action as soon as Felicia Solomon’s disappearance was reported to them. “In our culture, when a child is missing, you automatically look for that child. Especially when you know your child and you know that they phone.” Solomon’s mother knew her child. “We shouldn’t have to had to wait 48 hours.”
Felicia Solomon’s grandmother complained that after the family’s press conference the media had unfairly labeled her granddaughter a prostitute and gang member because the family was poor and because of the part of the city they live in. She feels that the police inaction was also influenced by these assumptions. “Just because our daughter was on welfare and she lived on the west side doesn’t mean that Felicia was a prostitute, or a gang member or that she was a druggie. You know, they label Aboriginal people right away. That’s the part that we didn’t like and I can’t say anything positive about the police because they were no help. We didn’t get help. We still don’t get help.”
Updated: 29 September 2009