A fifth person has been charged in the death of a man found in Sturgeon County.
A person named Tanisha M. Desjarlais is now facing charges of manslaughter, as the Edmonton Journal first reported.
Desjarlais is the fifth person who is charged in connection to the death of Kevin Dean Damien Yellowbird, whose body was found in a ditch along a rural road in Sturgeon County in October 2017.
Sterling Devon Martin McGilvery, 24, Skylar Taurus McGilvery, 21, Tyler Edmund Fischer, 31, and Cougar Dominique Fafard, 24, are already facing first-degree murder charges in the death of Yellowbird. All four are residents of Edmonton.
Yellowbird was a resident of Edmonton and had ties to the community of Ma-Me-O Beach.
Yellowbird, 27, was found in a ditch on a rural road in Sturgeon County on Oct. 17, 2017. RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Hal Turnbull said investigators believe Yellowbird passed away “some time before” Oct. 17.
Turnbull said investigators suspect he had been there for longer than two days but cannot confirm exactly how much time elapsed before his body was discovered. The RCMP are not releasing the exact location where Yellowbird’s body was discovered.
The RCMP say they will not release a timeline of events or how Yellowbird was killed until the trial.
The four already facing charges had a preliminary inquiry in August and after two days the inquiry was scheduled for another four weeks. The preliminary inquiry will resume on June 3, 2019, and is scheduled to run until June 29, 2019.
All details of the preliminary inquiry are under a publication ban, including why the additional four weeks were ordered.
Desjarlais’s charges were not included in the preliminary hearing and she will make an appearance in Edmonton on Sept. 25 to speak to the charges.
Yellowbird was the first of three bodies found during a six-week period last fall. All three bodies found were men who were residents of Edmonton and in their mid-20s.
The three incidents have been ruled as homicides, but the RCMP said they have no reason to believe the three events are connected.
So far, no charges have been laid in the two other cases.
Krishneel Kamal Kumar, 26, of Edmonton was found dead in a field near Riverstone Drive and Township Road 544A in Sturgeon County on Oct. 30, 2017. His death has been ruled a homicide, but RCMP are not releasing the cause of death.
A third man was found on Nov. 25, 2017. Edmonton resident Ahmed Farah, 25, was released from the Edmonton Remand Centre at 12:50 a.m. and was found dead less than two hours later outside St. Albert.
