UPDATE (Nov. 29, 4:40 p.m.): A 20-year-old Prince George man has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Fraser Lake’s Loren Leslie.
Cody Alan Legebokoff has been remanded in custody without bail, RCMP say.
EARLIER: A small B.C. community is in mourning after the death of a 15-year-old girl from Fraser Lake, near Vanderhoof.
The body of Loren Leslie, a Grade 10 student at Nechako Valley Secondary School, was found Saturday night off an isolated logging road about 22 kilometres north of Vanderhoof.
Her devastated mother Donna Leslie told The Province Monday her daughter was a gentle, introspective soul who cared deeply for other people.
“One of the most special parts of Loren is that she was so kind,” said Donna quietly. “She always cared about everybody else. She was so empathetic and sensitive.”
Loren was an “absolute angel” who liked to draw and who was very good at it, said dad Doug Leslie: “She was a sweet person. She was just an extremely beautiful kid.”
Loren was also legally blind, with about 50-per-cent vision in one eye, zero in the other, and problems with depth perception, said her parents.
“But nobody would know it. She coped really well,” said Doug.
Donna said her daughter told her earlier in the afternoon that she was going out for coffee with a friend. She never came home.
At around 9:45 p.m. two RCMP officers spotted a pickup truck turning onto Highway 27 from an unused forestry road.
On a hunch, one of the Mounties stopped the truck and talked to the 20-year-old driver.
Based on the conversation with the man and observations by the officers, police detained him while they called for a conservation services officer to search the nearby area.
The conservation officer traced the truck’s whereabouts into the woods. The area was still covered with fresh snow, barely disturbed except for marks left behind by the vehicle.
“As the [conservation officer] examined the area, he located the lifeless body of the teenage girl at around 11:50 p.m. a distance away,” said Cpl. Dan Moskaluk of the RCMP Southeast and North District Sunday night.
“The state of the young girl indicated that she had been murdered just hours before the man’s arrest.”
Her cause of death has not been released.
Donna said she doesn’t know how her daughter died: “They didn’t tell me and I’m so scared to know.”
The 20-year-old man, a resident of Prince George, remains in custody. No charges have been laid.
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