Barbara Kentner is dead. The 34-year-old Indigenous woman, struck by a trailer hitch apparently hurled from a passing vehicle on a Thunder Bay residential street in January, succumbed to her injuries on July 5, 2017 — nearly six months after the attack that left her requiring emergency surgery and from which she never fully recovered.
Thunder Bay police confirmed the death on Tuesday. An 18-year-old man who was in the vehicle at the time of the January 29 incident had already been charged with aggravated assault. As of Tuesday, police had not indicated whether they intended to upgrade that charge in light of Kentner’s death.
She leaves behind a young daughter.
Kentner and her sister Melissa were walking in a residential neighbourhood when someone in a moving car threw the metal hitch. Melissa Kentner told police she heard a voice from inside the vehicle say, “I got one.” Those three words — casual, predatory, chilling — have haunted the case since it first came to public attention. Family members called it a hate crime from the outset.
Anna Betty Achneepineskum, deputy grand chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, did not mince words in her statement following the death. “A young Indigenous mother died today, and a young girl is without her mother,” she said. “This should not happen. What do you say to a young girl that loses her mother?” Her questions are not rhetorical. They are a direct challenge to every level of government and every institution that has watched violence against Indigenous women in Thunder Bay accumulate without adequate response.
Thunder Bay’s troubled relationship with the safety and dignity of Indigenous people is not a secret. It is a documented, recurring crisis — one that Achneepineskum said has only escalated.
“This has been going on for far too long,” Achneepineskum said. “This is our reality, as many Indigenous Peoples, especially our women, have come to me with their stories.”
The legal question now is whether the charge against the accused will be upgraded to manslaughter or something more serious. That decision will be watched closely. It will say something about how the justice system values Barbara Kentner’s life — and about whether the phrase “hate crime,” used by her family from the beginning, will ever be formally recognized in a Canadian court in this case.
Barbara Kentner was 34 years old. She was a mother. She was walking down a street in her city. She deserved to go home.
