At 12:57 a.m. on September 7, 2020, Chelsea Poorman picked up a call from her younger sister on a Vancouver street and told her she’d met someone new. Her family never heard her voice again. Nineteen months later, Chelsea’s remains were found behind a vacant mansion in Shaughnessy, one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Canada. Vancouver police said her death was not suspicious. Her family has spent the years since asking how that can be true.
Who Chelsea Poorman was
Chelsea Poorman was a 24-year-old Cree woman and a member of Kawacatoose First Nation in Saskatchewan. She was the middle of three sisters, close to her mother, Sheila, and to her sisters, Diamond and Paige. She wrote her own songs, loved animals, and dreamed of working in makeup, fashion or music. Her family describes her as kind and trusting.
When she graduated from high school in Saskatoon in 2014, her teachers created a special award for her: a perseverance award, for everything she’d pushed through to finish Grade 12. A few months later, she was hit by a large truck while walking along a highway. She survived a fractured skull, a shattered arm and badly broken legs, with rods placed in her arm and leg. Doctors weren’t sure she’d walk again.
She did, with a brace on her left leg and a lifted shoe on her right foot. She walked with a limp and couldn’t fully bend her left arm. Her mother says the crash also left her with a brain injury.
In the summer of 2020, Chelsea followed her sister Paige to Vancouver for a fresh start and access to support services. By early September, according to her family, things were turning around: she’d seen a doctor, started treatment, opened a bank account and replaced her ID.
The night of September 6, 2020
It was Labour Day weekend. Chelsea came in from Burnaby, where she’d been living with her boyfriend, for dinner with her mom and sister. At the last minute, Sheila stayed home so the girls could have some sister time.
Chelsea and Paige ate at the Alibi Room in Gastown, stopped at the Belmont Hotel, then walked to a friend’s apartment near Granville and Davie. Because of Chelsea’s limp, the short walk took about 20 minutes.
At the apartment, the sisters argued. Around midnight, Chelsea got up to leave. Paige put a hand on her shoulder and asked where she was going. Chelsea didn’t answer.
Paige followed her down to the street and called her again and again. At 12:57 a.m., Chelsea picked up and said she’d met “a new bae.” Then the call ended. Police later said there was no activity on Chelsea’s phone after the early hours of that Monday morning, and that it last connected near Victory Square, about 12 blocks north.
A ten-day wait for a public alert
Chelsea’s phone appeared to be off all day Monday. Earlier that summer she’d gone five days without contact and turned up saying she’d lost her phone, but this time Sheila and Paige felt something was wrong. On Tuesday, September 8, Sheila reported her daughter missing and told the Vancouver Police Department about Chelsea’s disability and brain injury.
The family says the first officer they dealt with told them he had better things to do than work on missing people. Chelsea’s sister Diamond hung up on him.
The VPD’s public bulletin asking for help finding Chelsea went out on September 18, ten days after the report. Police have said detectives weigh several factors before publicizing a missing person’s case, including whether news coverage could put that person at risk. Sheila has said it felt like Chelsea didn’t matter to anybody.
The earliest newspaper mention of Chelsea we could find came three months later, in a December 2020 Vancouver Sun column about another death on the Downtown Eastside. The columnist noted a missing-person poster with Chelsea’s photo taped to a wall a few blocks away.
Nineteen months of searching
In November 2020, Chelsea’s case moved to more senior investigators. An officer told Sheila it was because they’d determined Chelsea was vulnerable, which Sheila had told police on the first day. Police said they interviewed people connected to Chelsea, reviewed her banking and phone records, canvassed for video and worked with Saskatoon police.
Meanwhile, her family searched on their own:
- They covered downtown Vancouver in #BringChelseaHome posters and set up a website and a Facebook group.
- They raised a $10,000 reward and hired a private investigator.
- Sheila and Paige carried Chelsea’s photo in the Women’s Memorial March on February 14, 2021.
- On the one-year mark, they walked the route they believe she took, from Granville and Drake to Victory Square, while a childhood friend led a matching walk in Saskatoon.
- A mural of Chelsea went up in the Downtown Eastside, and her stepfather, Mike Kiernan, drove from Saskatoon in a van covered in her photos.
By October 2021, Sheila said the family had to call police for updates and had heard nothing. She asked the question so many families of the missing ask: how does somebody vanish without a trace?
Found behind a vacant Shaughnessy mansion
On April 22, 2022, a construction worker at a long-vacant mansion in Shaughnessy walked around to the overgrown backyard. Just outside a back door, on a concrete patio, he found skeletal remains under a blanket, still dressed in clothing.
The house, owned from overseas and empty for years, sat about six kilometres from where Chelsea was last seen. A caretaker mowed the front lawn; the back was left unkempt. Police later said people had occasionally entered the property without permission.
The clothes matched what Chelsea had worn the night she disappeared, and police knew she had surgical hardware in her body from the 2014 crash. Her family wasn’t told until May 6, about two weeks after the discovery.
“Not suspicious”
The same day, Vancouver police announced that Chelsea had likely died on the property the night she vanished or soon after, and had gone undiscovered because the house was empty. The coroner couldn’t determine a cause of death. Police said there wasn’t enough evidence to suggest a crime and called her death not suspicious. On the cause of death, Sgt. Steve Addison said police would likely never know.
Two days later, at a vigil outside the house, Sheila shared what police hadn’t: the coroner told her Chelsea’s remains weren’t intact. Her cranium and some finger bones were missing.
Indigenous leaders in British Columbia and Saskatchewan demanded a full investigation. The Union of BC Indian Chiefs called for a public apology. Lawyer Doug White of the BC First Nations Justice Council compared the response to the dismissive policing that preceded the Robert Pickton inquiry.
The questions that remain
Police say they spent 20 months on the case and found no evidence of a crime. Chelsea’s family says that isn’t the same as an explanation. These are the questions that remain open:
- How did she get there? Chelsea couldn’t walk long distances without her brace. Her phone last connected north of where she was last seen; the house is about six kilometres south. Police have said they don’t know how she ended up there.
- What happened to her missing remains? In June 2022, police searched VanDusen Botanical Garden, about a kilometre away, with a drone and a cadaver dog, mapping coyote dens. No results were made public.
- Where are her belongings? Her stepfather says her phone, camera and ID are missing. Her phone has never been reported found.
- Who covered her with the blanket? No official explanation has ever been given.
- Who was the “new bae”? Police have never said whether they identified the person Chelsea told her sister about that night.
- Is there video? In January 2025, Sheila said a journalist told her there is footage of Chelsea on a transit bus that night, footage police never mentioned to her. This hasn’t been independently confirmed.
As Sheila told the Vancouver Sun, she believes Chelsea didn’t go to that house alone.
Not the only one
Chelsea was one of three young Indigenous women and girls found dead around Vancouver within about ten days in spring 2022, along with 20-year-old Tatyanna Harrison and 13-year-old Noelle O’Soup. In 2023 their families spoke out together about the same failures: delays, uncollected camera footage, slow identification and too little investigation.
In 2025, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip contrasted their cases with the 2009 killing of Wendy Ladner-Beaudry, a white jogger in Vancouver, which drew a task force and a $30,000 reward.
Where the case stands now
- July 2022: Vancouver police asked the RCMP to review their file. The findings have not been made public.
- January 2025: the public learned that several Vancouver police officers were under a Police Act investigation for neglect of duty over their response to the missing-person report. Sheila said police still hadn’t told her anything.
- May 2025: Chelsea’s family joined the Harrison and O’Soup families in requesting a coroner’s inquest. Only Tatyanna Harrison’s case was reopened; her inquest began in July 2026.
- Today: the VPD describes Chelsea’s file as open but not a criminal investigation.
How you can help
If you saw Chelsea Poorman on Granville Street, near Victory Square, or on a transit bus on the night of September 6–7, 2020, or if you know anything about how she came to be in Shaughnessy, contact the Vancouver Police Department’s Major Crime Section at 604-717-2500.
Listen to the full episode, 12:57: The Death of Chelsea Poorman on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts, and share Chelsea’s story. Follow @VanishedVoicesPod on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube.
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Resources:
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