Coroner's inquest into Tatyanna Harrison's death begins this week
The 20-year-old Indigenous woman was found in a Richmond boat in 2022. Two other families still await inquests into similar cases.
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A coroner's inquest into the death of Tatyanna Harrison begins today, but two other families are still waiting for similar inquiries.
Harrison, 20, was last seen in the Downtown Eastside on April 22, 2022. Her body was found two weeks later in a boat in dry dock at a marina in Richmond. She was Indigenous and had been reported missing by her family. Her remains were found naked from the waist down, but a sexual assault test had not been completed at the time.
Two other Indigenous women and youth — 24-year-old Chelsea Poorman and 13-year-old Noelle O'Soup — were also found deceased over a six-month period in 2022. All three had been reported missing and had connections to Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The police do not consider the deaths of Poorman or Harrison to be suspicious, though the families have criticized the investigations.
Following a press conference by the three families on May 5, 2025, B.C.'s chief coroner announced the inquest for Harrison. The coroner said at the time that inquests were not yet planned for Poorman and O'Soup because investigations into those deaths remained open.
Harrison's mother, Natasha, pushed police to complete a rape kit test and canvassed the Downtown Eastside in the weeks after her daughter's disappearance. She was later told a coroner initially believed Tatyanna's death was caused by fentanyl overdose, but after an autopsy, the cause was ruled sepsis. An independent pathologist who reviewed the evidence disagreed with that finding, stating the cause of death should have been ruled undetermined.
In February, an Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner investigation found Vancouver police erred when they failed to designate Tatyanna Harrison's disappearance as high risk.
