A Native American woman's brutal murder could lead to a life-saving law
A Native American woman's brutal murder could lead to a life-saving law
Jenni Monet
Thu 2 May 2019 01.00 EDT Last modified on Thu 2 May 2019 01.16 EDT
Savanna LaFontaine-Greywinds murder sparked outrage in the US. A bill named after her aims to address the crisis of violence against native women
Jenni Monet
Thu 2 May 2019 01.00 EDT Last modified on Thu 2 May 2019 01.16 EDT
There was heartbreak across Indian Country in August 2017 when the body of 22-year-old Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind was found duct-taped in plastic in the Red River.
The ribbon of water demarcates North Dakota from Minnesota, a tributary flowing northward across the Canadian border. Its where, a few years earlier, an Indigenous girl, 15-year-old Tina Fontaine, was discovered wrapped in a duvet cover and weighted down by rocks.
The tales of these two tragedies and the river itself are emblematic of a modern violence against one of the worlds most vulnerable populations, Indigenous women and girls. It is a problem police and authorities in the US have been accused of ignoring.
The river, over the decades, has come to be seen by many in the Indigenous community as a dumping ground for discarded bodies, but their sense is that detectives dont take this seriously. Loved ones of the missing started to drag the Red on their own starting in 2014 after finding Fontaine. That year, advocates say they pulled seven bodies from the river.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/01/savanna-act-native-women-missing-murdered
Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, Brooke Lynn Crews, and William Henry Hoehn. '
This is our baby: New details emerge in disappearance, murder of Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind [UPDATE]
by Jacquelyn Gray
August 28, 2017
The couple accused of killing Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind allegedly provided police with conflicting stories about how they ended up with the missing womans baby.
WDAY has reported that William Henry Hoehn, 32, and Brooke Lynn Crews, 38, are charged with conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, and providing false information to law enforcement. The pair appeared in Cass County District Court Monday afternoon, hours after the 22-year-olds body was found.
Police later identified Crews as the neighbor who asked LaFontaine-Greywind for help with a sewing project. Crews was arrested Thursday after officers allegedly found a healthy 2-day-old girl in her apartment. Hoehn, who was not on-site when officers executed the search warrant, was arrested a short time later.
According to recently-released court documents, Hoehn told officers that he came home at 2:30 p.m. August 19 and found Crews cleaning up blood in the bathroom, presenting him with the newborn and saying, This is our baby, this is our family.
More:
https://www.crimeonline.com/2017/08/28/this-is-our-baby-new-details-emerge-in-disappearance-murder-of-savanna-lafontaine-greywind-update/