WINNIPEG — The police have found the body of missing Winnipeg teenager, Cooper Nemeth. The 17-year-old went missing after heading to a house party in North Kildonan on the evening of Feb. 13.
Family, friends and volunteers scoured the streets of Winnipeg all week in an attempt to find Nemeth. But on Saturday evening, family members called off the hunt for the teen, after his body was found in a bin outside a house in Valley Gardens.
READ MORE: Winnipeg man charged in Cooper Nemeth homicide was on probation
On Sunday police arrested 22-year-old Nicholas Bell-Wright in connection to Nemeth’s homicide. Bell-Wright made his first court appearance Monday morning, and according to court documents, was on parole at the time of Nemeth’s murder.
READ MORE: GoFundMe page set up in honour of Cooper Nemeth
Timeline of Nemeth’s disappearance and homicide arrest
Missing children in Manitoba
The Canadian Centre for Child Protection said Winnipeg police receive an average of 3,000 to 4,000 reports of missing kids per year, which includes runaways, repeat incidents and those found.
Winnipeg police say four out of five missing persons reports they receive every month involve kids in the care of Manitoba Child and Family Services.
A report prepared for the city’s police board in September of 2015 said officers deal with an average of about 550 missing persons reports a month. Of those, 83 per cent involve kids in government care and 71 per cent are female.
READ MORE: Majority of missing persons are CFS wards: Winnipeg police
Another police report prepared for the same board meeting shows the top 19 addresses associated with missing persons reports are Child and Family Services facilities.
Federal government statistics show Manitoba had the highest number of missing persons reports involving children and youth per capita in Canada in 2014. There were just over 6,400 missing persons reports involving young people – nearly twice that of Saskatchewan and Alberta.
With files from the Canadian Press
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