Neil Stonechild

Neil Stonechild (August 24, 1973 – November 25, 1990) was a Saulteaux First Nations teenager who was found frozen to death in a remote field on the outskirts of Saskatoon in November 1990. Prior to his death, Neil Stonechild was picked up by 2 police officers from the Saskatoon Police Service and then dropped off. At the time his body was found, he had visible injuries, including those consistent with handcuffs, and he was partially clothed and only had one shoe. There were accusations that the police service had taken him to the northwest section of the city and abandoned him in a field on a night when temperatures were below −28 °C (−18 °F). The practice is known as a starlight tour, and a number of such cases in the Saskatoon area have been referred to collectively as the Saskatoon freezing deaths.

Background Stonechild was an accomplished wrestler, having won a bantamweight provincial title in Saskatchewan. He had also been convicted of breaking and entering earlier that year, and sentenced to live in a group home.

Death Stonechild's friend Jason Roy was with Stonechild the night of his death. When first interviewed by the police in 1990, 5 days after Stonechild's disappearance, Roy provided a handwritten, signed statement stating that he and Stonechild had drunk most of a 40-ounce bottle (1.4 litre) of vodka between them. Roy also stated that he and Stonechild had parted company at "about 1130 pm", and that he had "blacked out" and had no recollection of what happened after he and Stonechild separated that night. In 2000, however, Roy stated that the last time he saw Stonechild alive, Stonechild was handcuffed in the back of a police cruiser "gushing blood" from a cut on his face, and that the last words Stonechild said to him were "Jay, help me. They're going to kill me."

Stonechild's body was found, with one shoe missing, on November 29 by two construction workers. In the initial investigation of his death, the Saskatoon police determined that there was no foul play. Ten years later, however, his companion on November 24/25, Jason Roy, said Stonechild had been in police custody. Roy said he had seen his friend in the back of a police cruiser. In 2000 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigated Stonechild's death and the deaths of other First Nations individuals thought to have been in police custody. It concluded that marks on Stonechild's wrists and on his nose could have been caused by handcuffs. It was appealed but the firings were upheld. Starlight Tour: The Last, Lonely Night of Neil Stonechild, 2006 book by Susanne Reber and Robert Renaud