WINNIPEG — A 24-hour safe space for Winnipeg youth is being dedicated to the memory of a 15-year-old Indigenous girl whose body was found in the Red River.
Indigenous Services Minister Jane Philpott announced $340,000 in funding to expand the program at Ndinawe Youth Resource Centre.
Tina Fontaine stayed in the Ndinawe youth shelter in the summer of 2014 before she disappeared.
Tina’s great aunt, Thelma Favel, says the family worked with local organizations and the federal government to get the funding in her honour.
Favel says Tina always dreamed about working with children before her death.
She says it will be an important place for at-risk youth to get support and stay safe.
Tina left her home on Sagkeeng First Nation in the summer of 2014 to reconnect with her birth mother in Winnipeg. She soon became sexually exploited, and repeatedly ran away from the youth shelter and hotels where social workers had placed her.
She was last seen leaving a hotel Aug. 8. Her body was found just over a week later wrapped in a duvet cover and weighed down by rocks in the river.
The man accused of killing her, Raymond Cormier, was found not guilty of second-degree murder in February.