2 women killed in Prince George in less than 2 weeks

Prince George RCMP are investigating the second homicide of a woman in the city in less than two weeks.

Both women were found dead inside residences between midnight and 1 a.m.

On Tuesday, Feb. 14, RCMP Cpl. Jennifer Cooper said officers found a woman dead inside a house in the Sunrise Valley Mobile Home Park after responding to a report of a disturbance. 

Unmarked police vehicles blocked off both ends of a block of homes in the mobile home park. RCMP cruisers and uniformed investigators were visible down an icy road, where police tape was strung across several vehicles.

At the time, Cooper said serious crime unit investigators were working to identify two women seen leaving the residence after midnight.

On Feb. 16, RCMP announced they had arrested one woman, who has been charged with second-degree murder.

 RCMP said they are still searching for "other suspects" that may be connected to the case. 

In the first homicide case, on Feb. 4, another woman was found dead in her home in the Millar Addition on 17th Avenue at Fir Street, just a few doors down from the popular Lheidli T'enneh Memorial Park, in a quiet residential neighbourhood.

Last week, RCMP cruisers were parked outside the small yellow house for six days, investigating what they called a "suspicious death."

Cooper said the death has since been determined to be a homicide, but no details would be released "due to the privacy of the deceased." 

"It's too early in the investigation to draw any connections between the two deaths," Cooper told CBC News on Tuesday. "There's nothing glaringly obvious."

"Definitely, it's not the type of news we would like to receive," Prince George Mayor Simon Yu told CBC News. "Are they just this one-time occurrence or some kind of trend? Definitely, this has not helped the city's image."

Yu said his condolences go out to the women's families. "But it's not just the family. It's the community as a whole."

Prince George recorded six homicides in 2022 and in 2021, one homicide in 2020 and two in 2019, according to RCMP. 

A report presented to Prince George council in December 2022, in support of increased police funding, stated that the Prince George RCMP deals with more crime than almost any other city in the province. 

One of the report's authors, Surrey-based criminologist Curt Griffiths of Simon Fraser University, told local councillors that the city's crime was not a problem of perception vs reality.

"People are fearful of crime because they should be," he said.