A 33-year-old man from the Lac-Rapide reserve in the Outaouais region was charged with first-degree murder Friday in a homicide case that dates back almost 17 years.
The Sûreté du Québec arrested the man on Thursday as a suspect in the death of Rosiana Poucachiche, a 17-year-old girl who was killed on Oct. 10, 2000, in Lac-Rapide, a village of just 200 residents on an Algonquin reserve 400 kilometres north of Montreal. According to reports published at the time of her death, Poucachiche had been severely beaten and was found unconscious inside her family’s home early that morning. She was taken to a hospital in Maniwaki where she was declared dead shortly after she arrived.
The suspect was charged at the courthouse in Maniwaki, which is 300 kilometres north of Montreal. An SQ spokesperson said the man’s name cannot be published for the time being because he is being charged under the Youth Criminal Justice Act. The suspect was roughly the same age as Poucachiche when she was killed.
According to an article published in 2015 by La Presse — as part of a series on missing and murdered Indigenous woman from reserves in Quebec – Poucachiche was last seen alive by a female friend who spent time with her hours before she was assaulted. Her father found her unconscious in her bedroom after she did not respond to his requests that she wake up that morning.
The coroner’s report on the homicide notes that Poucachiche suffered trauma to her skull caused by impact by a blunt object. The blows were severe enough to cause three serious lacerations on her face and the back of her head. The autopsy also revealed that the victim had sex with someone shortly before she was killed, but that there were no indications she had been sexually assaulted.
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