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Searchers Find Frozen Body of Second Child on Saskatchewan Reserve

Posted on: Wednesday, 30 January 2008, 15:00 CST

By Tim Cook, THE CANADIAN PRESS

YELLOW QUILL, Sask. - The grief on a Saskatchewan First Nation deepened Wednesday morning with the discovery of the tiny frozen body of a toddler in knee-deep snow near her home - the day after her sister's body was found in the same condition.

Family members confirmed that searchers located Cadence Pauchay a short distance from where her sister Santana was discovered the night before. Police said the girls, aged 3 and 1, were wearing only T-shirts and diapers or briefs.

Dozens of community members and RCMP officers had helped in Wednesday's search, walking shoulder-to-shoulder and using poles to push through the deep snow on the Yellow Quill First Nation, east of Saskatoon.

The search for the two children was launched after their father, Christopher Pauchay, was picked up about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday suffering from frostbite and hypothermia. He was taken to hospital in nearby Kelvington, but it wasn't until eight hours later that he asked hospital staff about the condition of his daughters.

His mother, Pearl Pauchay, called her son a good father who took care of his children, but she said she understood he'd been drinking on the night in question. He has told her he can't remember anything from that night, but she believes he may have been walking from his house to his sister's house across a field that separates two rows of homes on the Yellow Quill reserve.

Chief Robert Whitehead said the tragedy has hit the family of the girls - and the entire community of about 800 - hard.

"(They're) normally a very happy family, so they were very quiet," he said. "It's not the kind of family that would normally be quiet so I think they're feeling pretty desperate.

"It's a pretty sad day for us over here."

RCMP Sgt. Brad Kaeding said police also believed alcohol was a factor in the tragedy.

"Our belief at this point is that they probably left the house together, the girls with the father, and unfortunately they didn't make it to the neighbour's house as he did," said Kaeding.

Source: Canadian Press

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