Here are our top 10 stories for the month of September 2016. We'll be presenting our annual Year in Review feature between now and Jan. 1.
- Thunder Bay Police laid second-degree murder charges against a 20-year-old woman after a body was found outside a south-side residence on McKellar Street. Kirsten Faith Wesley was arrested after being picked up and detained for questioning and faces the charge in the death of 20-year-old Leslie Noah Moonias.
- Twenty-five-year-old Otis Perkins was killed and a 14-year-old, who cannot be named under the terms of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, will face second-degree murder charges after a fatal stabbing incident in the Limbrick Street area.
- The month’s third murder charge was laid after a 35-year-old man’s body was found in a trailer on a lot abutting Wilson and Court streets. Armand Cumming was jailed and charged with second-degree murder in the death of Mannie Spence.
- Canada’s Minister of Transportation Steven Del Duca paid a trip to the Nipigon River Bridge where he released a report into its failure eight months earlier. Del Duca said repairs to the span, critical to east-west traffic flow throughout Northwestern Ontario, would cost between $8 million and $12 million and should be completed sometime in 2017. The report blamed human error and design flaws for the failure.
- A pedestrian was killed crossing the road and police sought witnesses who were with the man. No charges were laid in the incident which saw a the victim struck as he crossed Cumberland Street, just north of Red River Road.
- A fire in the Bay and Algoma area destroyed a vacant warehouse that once belonged to Superior Motors. Firefighters arrived on scene to find the building fully engulfed in flames. No one was hurt in the blaze, and the investigation continues into the cause of the fire.
- City council found a way to slice $3 million from its 2016 budget to help eliminate most of a troubling negative variance the municipality was facing. City manager Norm Gale said the savings would be accrued from cutting nearly $1 million from the operations budget and deferring more than $2 million in capital expenditures.
- Thunder Bay Police offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the unsolved 2014 murder of William Wapoose. Wapoose’s body was found by a passerby at Chapples Park. Police Chief J.P. Levesque said during a news conference they believe the case is very solvable.
- Teachers with the Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board took to the streets in search of a new contract, demanding more transparency when it comes to the board’s hiring process. Union officials say experience and seniority is being ignored in many cases, while the board said they are simply following criteria already set in place.
- Lakehead University hired Cynthia Westly-Esquimax as its first truth and reconciliation chair, a first for Canada, for that matter. Exquimax said universities must commit to more Aboriginal advisors and consider hiring some of the more than 4,000 PhD graduatesas fully tenured university professors.
