It’s been more than two decades this week since a young Indigenous Vancouver Island woman disappeared.
As her family marks another somber anniversary, RCMP say they are constantly is looking into new leads to bring Lisa Marie Young home and get justice for her loved ones.
Twenty-one years after Lisa Marie Young, 21, vanished from Nanaimo, her family and friends gathered outside the local RCMP detachment on Sunday.
“It leaves a big hole in our heart to not know where she is,” said Mary Martin, Lisa Marie Young’s aunt.
“Every day that we’ve gone without knowing the whereabouts of Lisa Marie … our family does hurt.”
With the community behind them, a group of more than 100 marched to Maffeo Sutton Park in what has become an annual walk for justice.
Young has not been seen since leaving a house party in the early morning hours of June 30, 2002. Her friends said she left with a man in a burgundy Jaguar vehicle. The same man drove Young and her friends to the party, they said.
He is among the hundreds of people interviewed by police in the unsolved case.
Cpl. Dean Muir, who grew up in Nanaimo, is now posted at the local detachment with his five-year-old German shepherd Luca, who specializes in human remains detection.
“I’m a very small part of this investigation but I’m hoping to be a part that will help bring some closure, help bring Lisa home and help advance a criminal case against the person or persons responsible,” Muir told Global News Sunday.
Nanaimo RCMP investigators believe Young met with foul play. Her homicide investigation is a priority for the serious crime unit, even two decades later.
Investigators have conducted numerous searches and received hundreds of tips but they said it’s never too late to come forward.
“There’s going to be somebody out there that knows something that is either afraid to come and talk to us or doesn’t want to talk us right now – but those circumstances might change,” said Cpl. Markus Muntener with the Nanaimo RCMP Serious Crime Unit.
Young’s mother Joanne fought tirelessly to keep her daughter’s disappearance in the public eye and never gave up searching, until she died in 2017.
“It’s really hard to know that she’s gone to the spirit world and never knowing what happened to her daughter on this earth,” said Martin.
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