Gatineau Park slaying victim was pregnant: police

Kelly Morrisseau returned to Ottawa from Winnipeg this summer

Last Updated: Wednesday, December 13, 2006 | 2:29 PM CT

CBC News

The woman found naked and bleeding in Gatineau Park on Sunday was pregnant with her fourth child, police confirmed.

At a news conference Wednesday morning, Gatineau police Lieut. Jean-Paul LeMay also confirmed that 27-year-old Kelly Lindsay Morrisseau was the woman who died in hospital after being found critically injured in a parking lot at the western Quebec park near Ottawa on Sunday morning.

Police said Kelly Morrisseau was last seen leaving her apartment in Ottawa's Vanier neighbourhood at 11 p.m. Saturday.
(CBC)

LeMay said autopsy results suggest Morrisseau died of massive bleeding from multiple wounds caused by a sharp object, and he added that biology and toxicology tests have been ordered to determine whether Morrisseau may have been sexually assaulted or may have taken alcohol or drugs before her death.

LeMay said police have made no arrests in the case and are seeking additional information. He added that police will be setting up a mobile police station Thursday at a gas station on Boulevard St-Raymond to encourage people who might have trouble calling or visiting a police station to come forward with information.

"So in a symbolic message, we're going out to them, in their neighbourhood," he said.

LeMay also painted a brief picture of the victim's life.

He said Morrisseau's three children were 2, 4 and 12 years old and she had returned to Ottawa this summer after spending six months in Winnipeg, which is about 100 kilometres south of her Manitoba hometown, the Fort Alexander aboriginal reserve.

Michael Giroux, who is Morrisseau's former common-law husband and the father of her children, lives in Winnipeg.

LeMay added that Morrisseau was a crack cocaine user and may have been working as a prostitute.

That is consistent with accounts from those who knew her, such as Delores Peltier, head of the aboriginal housing corporation that owns the apartment where Morrisseau lived until December 2005.

Peltier said a tenant relations worker at the Gignul non-profit housing corporation reported Morrisseau to the Children's Aid Society before her children were removed from her in the fall of 2005.

"He suspected she was doing drugs of some sort," Peltier said. "Whether it was shooting up or crack, I don't know."

Yosief Tekie, who owns a confectionary that Morrisseau often visited, said he used to see the woman out on the sidewalk at 6 a.m., and that led him to believe she worked on the streets.

In a statement released Wednesday afternoon, police said Morrisseau was last seen leaving her apartment in Ottawa's Vanier neighbourhood at 11 p.m. Saturday, less than seven hours before she was found in Gatineau Park.