‘She was loved’: Family pays tribute to mother of 4 killed in Winnipeg last week

Daniel Flett wishes he had had the chance to say goodbye to Briannah Clowes “one last time.”

The 28-year-old mother of four children – ages 11, six, three and one – was pronounced dead in hospital Thursday after emergency responders found her with life-threatening injuries on The Promenade.

Clowes was honoured at a vigil Tuesday night attended by family and loved ones.

“Sometimes we meet our maker and run into a bad person that takes the life of someone that didn’t deserve anything like this,” said Flett, who shares a son with Clowes – her eldest.

“Always hold your loved ones close and tell them you love them.”

Flett says while Tuesday’s gathering brought him some peace, there will always be a hole in his life.

“You think it could never happen to your loved ones,” he said. “Even with the distance we had, she still felt like she was very close to me.”

On Sunday, Winnipeg police arrested a 32-year-old Winnipeg man in the case and charged him with second-degree murder. Police say Clowes and the accused knew each other.

Clowes’s sister Shauna is remembering her as an “honourable, beautiful person who had a kind soul.”

“I’m gonna remember the person that she was, not how she died,” Shauna said.

“She was a loving mother of four who did not deserve what happened to her and there will be justice for that.”

Clowes put herself through college and was a health-care aide “at one point in her life,” according to Flett. “She always found the good in every bad situation.”

Clowes struggled with addiction, her family says, but they add that didn’t change the fact she had aspirations in life and was a good mother.

“She’s not someone to just be thrown away like trash or because of what her path was in life,” said Kasandra Flett, Daniel’s sister and aunt to Clowes’ oldest. “Because she was a good person. She had goals. She had dreams. She always wanted to provide for her children. She knew when she couldn’t, and she knew when she could.

“I remember talking to her … when she was younger and how we wanted to go to Hawaii and travel. She wanted to take her children and show them the world. And for her to experience travelling in the world, she kept a notebook of all her goals.”

As the family members try to make sense of what happened to their loved one, they want to know why their family will never be the same again.

“I know they’re really gonna miss their mom,” said Kasandra. “It’s a generation now that’s going to be facing trauma, something that they shouldn’t have to face at such a young age.”

Kasandra says every single generation of their families feels the loss. Kasandra, Shauna and Flett say they saw Clowes around a month before her death.

Besides the fact police made an arrest, the family says it still knows little of what happened. They say they do not know the suspect.

“My hope in the end is I get to make a victim impact statement and I want to be able to look him straight in the eyes and tell him exactly how I feel when that day comes in court,” said Flett.

“I would like to have the answers to let her children know at the end of the day, and for her family,” Kasandra added. “Her family love her dearly and I just spoke with her great-grandmother yesterday, and we care for her. She was loved.”