About 20 people came out Thursday night to a rally on Salmon River Road in the north Okanagan to remember the four women who are still missing in the region.
“It’s time to bring the girls home,” Ashley Simpson’s aunt Marney Portugaise said. “Enough is enough.”
“If people don’t start talking and making it bigger in the limelight, bringing it to the forefront, it’s just going to slip away and nobody’s going to be found and it’s just going to get worse.”
They also lit candles for Traci Genereaux, the Vernon teen whose remains were found on a Salmon River Road farm last month.
Rally organizers vowed to continue bringing attention to the missing women’s cases in the areas where they went missing.
“There are unanswered questions about Traci’s death and there are still the four other women that are missing,” Jody Leon said. “In my view it’s really important to continue to do this work.”
The rally took place at the Armstrong-Heywood Road bridge.
Nicole Bell’s parents attended the rally but declined comment about their daughter’s case. The 31-year-old was last seen near Sicamous Sept. 2, but her cell phone was recovered in Salmon Arm, about a 20 minute drive away.
Ashley Simpson would have been 34 on Nov. 15. She was last heard from Apr. 30, 2016, on Yankee Flats Road, which runs parallel to the west of Salmon River Road.
Caitlin Potts, 27, was last seen Feb. 22, 2016, in Enderby.
Deanna Wertz went missing from Yankee Flats Road Jul. 19, 2016. The 46-year-old said she was going for a hike.
Rally participants then drove to Salmon Arm to put up posters in the area where Bell’s phone was recovered and where she was last seen.