Lisa Johnstone says it is clear her son was murdered and she can’t understand why the RCMP hasn’t come to the same conclusion.
Twenty-year-old Brennan Ahenakew’s body was found in a burnt out vehicle on the Ahtahkakoop First Nation on May 10.
RCMP Corporal Rob King says police consider his death as suspicious but have no reason to believe foul play was involved.
However, Johnstone says the police are just plain wrong.
“The only reason my son’s case is not being labeled a homicide is because his initial cause of death is smoke inhalation,” she says. “Which leads me now, even worse, to think what did they do to my son’s body that he couldn’t move or get out of that vehicle? Or what, did they knock him out? Did they leave him, lock him in there and set him on fire?”
Johnstone says Ahenakew was not a big drinker and didn’t do drugs but for whatever reason believes he fell in with the wrong crowd on the night in question and it ended up proving fatal.
“You would have to understand when my son would go out with his friends, they would always bring him home. He would always come home, all the time. If he had his car, he would go have a drink and he would come home.”
Earlier in the week, it was revealed that someone posing as Brennan Ahenakew contacted Johnstone on Facebook Messenger.
She says she believes it was someone connected to his death.
Johnstone says her son, who stood at 6’ 5”, was an avid football and basketball player but non-aggressive and gentle by nature.
He had taken a year off after graduating from high school last year.
Shellbrook RCMP sent out a release on May 11 saying an officer attended to a burning vehicle on the Ahtahkakoop First Nation around 10 a.m. on May 10.
However, it would not be until more than seven hours later, at 5:30 p.m., after receiving information that there may be human remains in the same vehicle, that police actually began an examination of the burnt out vehicle.
It would then not be until the next day that a full examination of the vehicle would be conducted with the forensic identification section, traffic reconstructionist, provincial coroner and fire scene examiner.
The human remains would later be identified as Ahenakew’s.
Johnstone says RCMP waited four days after her son’s body was found before contacting witnesses in the investigation.
(PHOTO: Brennan Ahenakew. Photo courtesy Brenan Ahenakew Facebook page.)