Call to review Tatyanna Harrison death investigation after cause ruled undetermined

The family of Tatyanna Harrison and advocacy groups including the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs are calling for a comprehensive review of the investigation into her death four years ago, as they renew calls to reopen the case.

It comes after a B.C. coroner’s inquest last week found the 20-year-old Indigenous woman’s cause of death on May 1, 2022, was undetermined, which the groups say conflicted with previous findings of the coroner’s service.

The jury made eight recommendations, including that Harrison’s official registration of death be changed to reflect her “Aboriginal status” and include her mother’s name.

It also recommended that police receive adequate training for missing persons investigations, and that Indigenous liaison personnel be added to missing-persons units.

The jury also recommended a review of how cause-of-death information is verified before releasing it to the public and for there to be clear definitions around who should be classified as a high-risk missing person.

“I am grateful for the jury, but those recommendations — you missed a lot there,” mother Natasha Harrison told a news conference on Monday, adding that the investigations into her daughter’s disappearance and death were “built on assumptions.”

“I have lost complete faith in the way the systems run. I’ve lost complete faith in the police. I have lost complete faith in the coroner.”

Tatyanna Harrison’s body was found on a drydocked yacht in Richmond, B.C., and the groups say that while she was naked from the waist down, RCMP did not deem the death suspicious.

“I would like my daughter’s case properly investigated by someone who wants to do it, somebody who cares,” Harrison told the news conference.

She said she strongly advocated for a second autopsy and to have tests done on a sexual assault kit, which was collected six months after her daughter’s body was found. Those kits were never tested, she said.

“I want proof that my daughter wasn’t trafficked, I want proof that she wasn’t murdered. That’s it. That’s all I’ve asked for, that’s all I stood by,” Harrison said.

She said she investigated her daughter’s death, including interviewing people who knew her daughter and potential witnesses, because she felt police were not doing a thorough job. She said she filmed and compiled everything she found and brought it to police.

“It is appalling, as a mother who’s grieving and desperate, that I was able to do a better job than them,” she said of police.

“I had a cell phone and a determination to find my daughter and then to find what happened to my daughter because they weren’t — they were failing her.”

Harrison also said she was devastated to learn at the inquest that her daughter had been buried in an unmarked grave in August 2023 without her knowledge or consent.

“You have the audacity to traumatize us further. How many whips are we going to take on our backs because you couldn’t do your job?,” she said Monday.

“I’m embarrassed that I have to say that this is the province I come from, this is people who protect us. It’s embarrassing that that’s the way our systems run. It’s embarrassing that a mom can out-cop you.”

Sue Brown, who is legal counsel for Natasha Harrison, said the case needs to be reviewed in light of the jury’s findings, and that the coroner’s service got it wrong by initially attributing the death to drug toxicity, then to sepsis.

Brown said the unanswered questions include how Harrison got to Richmond, with whom, and most importantly, how she died.

She said policies guiding RCMP death investigations are clear in that “all reportable deaths be treated as suspicious and thoroughly investigated.”

“I think assumptions were made early on and they didn’t follow their policy and I think we’d like to see them follow their policy,” she said on Monday.

Brown’s group, Justice for Girls, as well as the union and the BC Civil Liberties Association are supporting Natasha Harrison’s call for the investigation to be renewed and the investigation to be reviewed.

Brown said there were no recommendations from the jury on the issues surrounding the RCMP death investigation or to the coroner.

“We are therefore calling on the minister of public safety and solicitor general to direct a review into the missteps and failures by all agencies involved in the death investigation about what happened to Tatyanna Harrison, particularly the death investigation, and to renew investigative efforts to bring answers to her family and restore public trust in law enforcement and our investigative institutions,” she said.

The RCMP did not directly respond to Monday’s criticism, but a spokesman said that when recommendations are made by a coroner, the RCMP “conducts a thorough review to assess their implications and determine appropriate steps for implementation, where necessary.”

Brown said other recommendations the groups and family would have liked to have seen would include that cause and manner of death not be communicated to family or law enforcement prior to medical confirmation. They would also like to see the coroner implement a policy to collect sexual assault examination kits immediately to preserve evidence and to take x-rays during autopsies to compare with dental records.

Brown also noted that the only information the family or the group has about the woman’s burial came from the inquest. She called the decision to bury her body without her family’s knowledge or consent “shocking and unfathomable.”

“It means that any hope of further forensic investigation is also buried with Tatyanna,” she said.

“The family is looking for answers about what happened, and I think we’ll certainly be spending a significant amount of time in the near future trying to find those answers.”

Jatinder Baidwan, British Columbia’s chief coroner said ahead of the inquest that “the pain of losing a child is unimaginable, and the concerns the Harrisons have expressed regarding the circumstances of Tatyanna’s death only adds to that pain.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 13, 2026.