Click here to sign up for our free daily newsletter.

Lee Bonneau’s death mourned in several Sask towns

Aug 28, 2013 | 7:07 AM

Lee Allan Bonneau’s death isn’t just impacting one small community in Saskatchewan. It’s having a ripple effect throughout several communities.

Kahkewistahaw First Nation has been under the microscope since the six-year-old foster child was found fatally injured Wednesday night. But people who have had contact with the child in other parts of Saskatchewan tell News Talk Radio that Bonneau had only been on the reserve for about three weeks.

He was originally from Odessa, a small village about 60 kilometers southeast of Regina. Mary Jo Herman was his school bus driver.

“It’s so sad,” she lamented during an interview Tuesday. “You know, senseless. Like who could do something like that to anybody? But, you know, a little boy, a harmless, innocent little boy?”

Herman said Bonneau’s mother would walk him to the bus stop every morning.

“Then all of a sudden Lee wasn’t on the bus at all and nobody knew why,” she said. “It’s kind of sketchy, some things. We just weren’t aware of a lot of stuff.”

Bonneau’s biological mother said in a news release from the RCMP last week that the boy loved the outdoors and had a deep laugh. Herman paints a picture of a quiet boy, who was small for his age.

Herman says people in Odessa are sad and shocked by the news of Bonneau’s murder.

That sadness spreads from Odessa to Vibank to Neudorf. The Prairie Valley School Division says Bonneau went to school in Vibank first, then Neudorf.

As for the people at Kahkewistahaw, they’re pushing for change. Bobbi Alexson has started a petition calling for curfews and peacekeepers on the First Nation.

It will be presented to chief and council later this week.

news@panow.com

On Twitter: @princealbertnow