The River Remembers | APTN Investigates

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:08]They didn't have to chase him.

[00:00:11]He wasn't hiding [music] from nobody or nothing.

[00:00:15]It was unnecessary death.

[00:00:21]>> The history of policing in Canada is [music] rooted in colonization.

[00:00:30]The role wasn't just [music] to serve and protect, but to clear land for settlers.

[00:00:37]From the pass system that criminalized indigenous movement off reserve to enforcing [music] the residential school system where the intent was to kill the Indian in the child.

[00:00:50]And now [music] to modern-day violence against indigenous people.

[00:00:55]>> What do you think was going through her head? In in that moment, you know.

[00:00:59]Opening door and then having that encounter.

[00:01:03]>> She was probably scared to death.

[00:01:05]>> There's another ricocheted bullet right here.

[00:01:08]My children were right behind this wall.

[00:01:10]They could have killed them.

[00:01:12]>> So, who is held accountable when someone dies at the hands of police?

[00:01:32]This story begins in Saint Stephen, New Brunswick where the Saint Croix River holds the memory of what happened to Makai Thomas.

[00:01:41]>> We usually like directing the smoke to our eyes so we can see good in other people.

[00:01:47]>> Rick Thomas lights a match to smudge. He wants to cleanse and purify before he tells the story of his son, Makai.

[00:01:56]>> He was just a pleasant boy to be around.

[00:02:00]And he was always competitive with his older brother.

[00:02:05]He made sure of that. When they they would go into water and hold their breath and they would uh get me to count so you could stay under the water the longest.

[00:02:15]And of course he would win.

[00:02:18]He loved weightlifting, [music] uh playing sports.

[00:02:23]>> Makai's mother, Lorna Thomas, [music] said he was loving and kind.

[00:02:28]>> He was just outgoing.

[00:02:30]He liked to meet people.

[00:02:33]He was the life of the party. He had a lot of friends. [music] A lot of girlfriends.

[00:02:38]>> [snorts] >> He was handsome.

[00:02:39]>> [laughter] >> Sounds like he really left like a mark on everybody he met.

[00:02:44]>> He did.

[00:02:45]Everybody.

[00:02:47]All his friends [music] like loved him.

[00:02:52]>> The Thomas family said [music] Makai struggled with addiction later in his life.

[00:02:57]But they did their best to support him.

[00:03:00]>> He was looking for help.

[00:03:02]Help cuz everyone was saying like he was tired [music] of his addiction and he wanted to stop what's happening. He wanted to get back to the real world again.

[00:03:13]And uh and then this happened here.

[00:03:18]>> His mother was on her way to look for Makai on November 15th, 2025, the day he died.

[00:03:26]>> We went in there every day check on him.

[00:03:28]See if he needed something to eat or need some clothing or what have you.

[00:03:34]And uh she seen this commotion going on downtown.

[00:03:40]>> I don't know why I didn't stop and ask somebody what was going on or whatever.

[00:03:45]But I came back home and >> [snorts] >> like Rick said, I said, "Rick, there's something going on in town.

[00:03:54]And I just said I hope I hope it doesn't have to do with Makai.

[00:04:00]>> And uh sure enough, it was him.

[00:04:03]And then uh uh all hell broke loose, I guess.

[00:04:11]>> The Thomases say what happened next was a living nightmare.

[00:04:15]>> A knock came on the door [music] and it was a lady police officer and a man one.

[00:04:21]And they said that Makai had entered the water and he had went under.

[00:04:26]And they were now turning it into a search.

[00:04:35]>> The CCTV footage was obtained by the Thomas family.

[00:04:39]It shows RCMP officers pursuing Makai on foot near the Saint Croix River.

[00:04:51]Bystander video captures his final moments as officers [music] remain on shore.

[00:04:58]Witnesses say he fought to stay afloat for 10 to 15 minutes before he disappeared under water.

[00:05:05]Makai was wanted for failing to contact his parole officer.

[00:05:11]The Thomas family says the actions of the RCMP officers were reckless.

[00:05:16]>> I was working and I received a call from my father.

[00:05:21]And uh he just said that the police were at the house.

[00:05:27]>> Makai's brother JB quickly made the drive over to help search for him.

[00:05:31]>> And I went down to the the river where I knew this this all took place.

[00:05:38]And I was surprised to see that uh there was nobody out looking for him.

[00:05:43]>> [music] >> So, you know, I just started walking the beaches myself at night and I walked until [music] 3:00 in the morning trying to find him.

[00:05:58]Saying [music] his name over and over.

[00:06:02]>> Mckay's body was found the next day.

[00:06:05]And in the stillness that follows tragedy, questions begin to gather like storm clouds.

[00:06:12]Could Mckay have been saved?

[00:06:14]>> They they took our son from us. It's what they did that day.

[00:06:18]They really did. They chased him to the water and they took our son.

[00:06:25]>> Lorna Thomas wonders why there was no life-saving equipment on the waterfront or deployed by first responders.

[00:06:33]>> This is where Mckay Thomas's deadly encounter with police ended.

[00:06:38]In the water after a foot chase with the RCMP.

[00:06:41]What happened here isn't part of any national record keeping, but the data we do have points to a larger pattern. More deaths and a disproportionate impact on indigenous people. So, why does it keep happening?

[00:06:57]>> Police in Canada are responsible [music] for more civilian deaths than ever before.

[00:07:02]Since 2000, the rate of police [music] use of force deaths has almost doubled and indigenous people remain dramatically [music] overrepresented.

[00:07:13]According to an analysis by the [music] Pivot Legal Society, between 2000 to 2017, [music] just over 3% of fatal police incidents led to charges against officers. [music] And even fewer were convicted.

[00:07:30]It's a snapshot into a growing [music] trend of officer-involved fatalities.

[00:07:37]>> So, we have you know, a death since the year 2000 is when we started the database. and so you can see um the increase over time. The reason we made this website in the first place is so that people could um uh uh answer questions that they had about this.

[00:07:54]>> Carleton University criminologist Alexander McClelland, along with co-author Andrew Crosby, have continued the work of tracking fatal police encounters.

[00:08:04]>> There's a lot of things we know in Canada statistics about like rainfall, about car accidents, but we can't answer a really, really important life or death question [music] about how many people are killed by police every year in use-of-force incidents.

[00:08:20]>> The data tells its own story, a pattern within a system.

[00:08:25]Some say [music] it's a crisis hiding in plain sight.

[00:08:29]And in that pattern, indigenous people appear again and again.

[00:08:34]According to the most [music] recent data, police have killed more than 860 people since 2000.

[00:08:42]Professor McClelland [music] says police don't consistently track race, creating major gaps in the data.

[00:08:49]>> We don't know a lot about deaths at the hands of police, deaths due to use-of-force um government agencies [music] don't collect this information.

[00:08:59]>> More than 43% of use-of-force deaths have no race recorded.

[00:09:04]Of those that are, indigenous people account for 17%.

[00:09:09]He says the true number could be much higher.

[00:09:13]>> What we do know [music] is that long-standing and long-understood patterns of racial inequity um and racial injustice are being reproduced um through police violence.

[00:09:25]I think most concerning about our database is in the past [music] number of years we've seen the highest numbers of deaths due to use-of-force ever recorded.

[00:09:38]>> The Thomas family retraced Mekai's steps in an effort to make sense of what happened.

[00:09:44]>> Yeah, my son was standing here. I think he was doing his laundry and the Mounties pulled in right there.

[00:09:51]They jumped out of the car. He ran right around here.

[00:09:56]They right down through here he went.

[00:10:01]And the Mounties were right behind him.

[00:10:03]>> And so Mekai is running >> This is where he went over the bank.

[00:10:08]>> Oh, over here?

[00:10:09]>> Yeah, he ran over the bank there then down along the shore and then into the river.

[00:10:14]>> Okay.

[00:10:15]Do you think, you know, given that it was anywhere from 70 70 ft to 150 ft do you think that it was possible that someone could have gone out there and just grabbed him?

[00:10:27]>> Oh, someone could have swam out there. I could have swam out there.

[00:10:31]Oh, that wasn't very far.

[00:10:36]It's inhumane is what it is.

[00:10:41]To use a human body like that.

[00:10:44]>> So this is where we said our goodbye. I touched him when he was in the body bag.

[00:10:54]You were a nice boy.

[00:11:02]>> So when does pursuit lead to abandonment?

[00:11:05]And when does action become violence?

[00:11:08]>> He entered the freezing water struggling drowning [music] in the middle of the day watching people just stand there.

[00:11:22]>> The Serious Incident Response Team or SIRT is an agency that investigates [music] cases where police may have caused serious harm or death.

[00:11:32]SIRT said the case didn't meet its mandate [music] for an investigation and that the actions of the officers didn't result in Makai's death.

[00:11:42]>> When you have someone die with an encounter with police, I think, you know, it needs to be taken seriously and you know, proper investigations need to be done.

[00:11:59]>> Seeing his face, hearing his voice, just he's gone. I just have an emptiness.

[00:12:13]It's like >> [music] >> a part of us left when he left.

[00:12:19]He was [snorts and music] our baby.

[00:12:22]And he can't be replaced.

[00:12:26]>> Yeah, kids aren't supposed to go before you.

[00:12:31]And that lady's gone, you know.

[00:12:35]>> [music] >> Our lives [music] are stopped.

[00:12:42]And it was a unnecessary death on his part.

[00:12:46]That's why it's so hard to accept what happened to him.

[00:13:07]>> [music] >> The numbers of police use of force deaths are staggering.

[00:13:13]And families [music] across the country share a similar pain.

[00:13:18]Some say trauma [music] moves like a sickness, quiet at first, taking hold before it spreads.

[00:13:26]Long before Makai's [music] death, trauma had already taken root in the Thomas family.

[00:13:32]>> We >> [music] >> ended up in Saint Stephen cuz of the residential school.

[00:13:40]We had [music] letters they sent to my grandfather saying, "You have to bring the kids back to the residential school, or else you're going to be charged and thrown in jail." [music] And my grandfather wrote back to them telling them, "No, [music] my kids are fine. They're going to school here.

[00:13:57]They're well clothed. They're getting fed. We're not going back down there so you can abuse them more."

[00:14:04]>> This history lives in the Thomas family memory, in letters saved, and in the children who escaped.

[00:14:12]>> I can imagine.

[00:14:16]Yeah, I mean, take your kids from your family.

[00:14:22]>> Does it make [music] you angry?

[00:14:23]>> Oh, mighty.

[00:14:26]>> That's history.

[00:14:27]>> Mhm.

[00:14:28]>> And it just [music] shows more or less that things never change, right?

[00:14:32]>> Mhm.

[00:14:33]>> From way back in that [music] generation till now.

[00:14:36]>> Yeah, it's like a a bad circle happening again.

[00:14:42]>> A circle that was never [music] broken.

[00:14:45]The system that once took children from their families is the same system families still turn to in moments of crisis.

[00:14:53]>> She was easy to approach, and when she moved out here, she made friends very quickly.

[00:15:00]>> Martha Martin's daughter, Chantel Moore, was killed by Edmonton police during a wellness check in 2020.

[00:15:07]>> It was around 4:00 when they had returned.

[00:15:14]>> [snorts] >> Two officers had returned.

[00:15:18]>> [sighs] >> It was two officers, I remember.

[00:15:22]But they had returned to my door to tell to tell me that my daughter had been shot and she didn't make it.

[00:15:32]>> [sighs and gasps] >> Moore was just 26 years old when she was shot and killed on her apartment balcony.

[00:15:39]>> She was sleeping on the sofa.

[00:15:41]Um he was banging on the door.

[00:15:46]And then he banged on the window.

[00:15:49]And then from what [music] he were was telling us when we were there that when she came towards him she had a knife.

[00:16:02]>> Martha doesn't believe the police theory about the weapon. [clears throat] >> Why would she approach a police officer with a knife?

[00:16:09]You know, knowing what the consequences would be, you know.

[00:16:13]>> I'm about to wipe out people, indigenous peoples.

[00:16:15]>> Moore's death was part of a string of officer-involved fatalities that sparked outrage across the country. And renewed [music] calls for a public inquiry into the death.

[00:16:25]>> How many more of our people have to die at the hands of your police?

[00:16:30]Mothers are tired of burying their children.

[00:16:34]>> There needs to be systemic change in policing. [music] >> To go through this repeatedly over and over again with no accountability and no transparency from those systems that are put in place to serve and protect us.

[00:16:44]>> In 2020 there was 52 deaths at the hands of law enforcement.

[00:16:48]>> I don't understand how someone dies during a wellness check. I'm pissed. I'm outraged. There needs to be a full accounting [music] of of what has gone on.

[00:16:57]>> 2021 55, 2022 62.

[00:17:01]>> The system itself needs to change.

[00:17:05]>> 2023 50.

[00:17:08]>> The killing must stop.

[00:17:09]>> 2000 2024 37.

[00:17:12]>> This is a pattern that keeps repeating itself.

[00:17:14]>> That is an average of 54 per year.

[00:17:18]And our numbers are climbing.

[00:17:23]>> A coroner's inquest was held after Moore's death.

[00:17:27]The report ruled Moore's death a homicide.

[00:17:31]The jury acknowledged that systemic racism was a factor.

[00:17:36]>> You relive the emotions and you know, the what ifs or what you know, and >> [snorts] >> what if I had gone with him, you know, just all of those questions that pop up and what if the outcome could have been different and I don't know how to explain it. It's like you're you're an emotion of tornadoes and it's like you're reaching out for somebody to grab you.

[00:18:09]Like just throw your lifeline and when you realize there's really no one there.

[00:18:18]Like you have to pull yourself out.

[00:18:26]>> Grief like this echoes across families.

[00:18:31]Jessica Paul knows the trauma of this loss all too well.

[00:18:35]>> Yeah, there's trees everywhere. It's a really pretty place.

[00:18:37]I've been living here for 22 years in this house.

[00:18:44]I seen him getting out of his truck. He had his hunting sweater on.

[00:18:47]And he just must have just got back from hunting and I just said, "Oh my god."

[00:18:51]Like there, you know, it was that was the moment that changed everything for me.

[00:18:59]>> She says it's the kind of love that knocked her and Bronson Paul off their feet.

[00:19:04]>> I mean, it was good. Like we loved each other hard.

[00:19:07]We did, you know, he made me laugh so hard. Like I would describe him as a a really funny outdoorsman. He's He was big outdoorsman.

[00:19:19]He loved hunting, he loved fishing, he loved being outside by the water.

[00:19:23]>> For 9 years, they built a life together in Tobique First Nation until January 2026 when everything changed.

[00:19:31]>> I think it affected everybody.

[00:19:34]Like it really just It really [music] did.

[00:19:37]Everybody knows where they were when they found out Bronson died.

[00:19:42]>> According to New Brunswick RCMP, officers responded to a report of a domestic dispute.

[00:19:49]RCMP say that the situation quickly evolved and that Paul advanced towards them with an edged weapon.

[00:19:57]>> I remember they said, uh, "He's got a knife." And I could see him right from here. I had no No, he doesn't. I remember saying that.

[00:20:04]And, uh, they deployed their taser.

[00:20:06]And which he went back I seen him go backwards into the bathroom.

[00:20:09]And, uh, I seen them rush them.

[00:20:12]But I couldn't see inside the bathroom.

[00:20:14]>> No, no, no, man.

[00:20:17]>> Police shot Bronson multiple times before he fell to the ground.

[00:20:22]>> I was looking at him when his eyes went back in his head and he just fell.

[00:20:27]Yeah, that was He He was He was gone.

[00:20:31]I was screaming like And, uh, my children were right behind this wall where he was standing. They could have They could have killed them.

[00:20:41]I was the only one help like there was no help. There was no help to try to get him to stop bleeding.

[00:20:45]It was just me like just trying to comfort him like, "Don't leave me, baby.

[00:20:48]Please don't leave me."

[00:20:51]>> Chief Ross Perley said protocol for RCMP to enter the reserve is for them to be accompanied by tribal security who are [music] skilled at de-escalating.

[00:21:01]>> For whatever reason that didn't happen yesterday and this is the result of that.

[00:21:06]We're looking for a transparent [music] investigation, Um, one that includes indigenous oversight.

[00:21:14]>> Chief Perley issued [music] multiple calls to action. They include a shift to indigenous led policing and reform of oversight bodies like SIRT, citing RCMP have a history of protecting their own and avoiding accountability.

[00:21:30]>> There's another uh like I said bullet right here on the floor.

[00:21:35]And Bronson fell right right here.

[00:21:38]He fell right here and died right here.

[00:21:40]In our kitchen, in our house. Which other room is behind this wall in the room behind this behind the kitchen?

[00:21:46]>> Okay.

[00:21:47]>> There's three of them back there and they would he shot all those bullets right in their direction.

[00:21:55]>> The river doesn't keep records and the land doesn't write reports.

[00:22:01]But it remembers the moments and the names, the lives lost to police violence.

[00:22:07]>> [music] >> And families continue to ask >> Why did everybody else just stand around and allow it to happen? Why did nobody help me? Why did nobody help him?

[00:22:16]>> Why [music] is it necessary for them to use such force, you know, such lethal force?

[00:22:21]>> We're supposed to brown.

[00:22:24]Like what about reconciliation?

[00:22:26]They all talk about >> How can they >> [music] >> fix their mistakes if they're not going to admit to them?

[00:22:33]>> Everybody has a family and they're loved regardless, [music] right?

[00:22:50]>> Throughout this investigation, we requested an on-camera interview with the RCMP.

[00:22:55]The force declined and instead provided a written response of nearly 1,400 words. They acknowledge that a written statement would be difficult to translate for broadcast. The response addressed a range of issues including officer safety, fatalities involving RCMP members, and policies.

[00:23:15]As public institutions increasingly rely on written responses, APTN News believes meaningful engagement with the media remains essential to public transparency and accountability. If you have information about deaths involving police, [music] oversight investigations, or experiences you believe should be examined, APTN Investigates wants to hear from you.

[00:23:38]We can be reached at [email protected]. [music] This story and more can be found at aptnnews.ca/investigates.

[00:23:48]I'm Brittany Guyot. Thanks for watching.