‘Why does Leo not matter?’: Winnipeg woman demands answers 1 year after fiancé’s death
Posted May 8, 2025 1:27 pm.
Last Updated May 8, 2025 7:22 pm.
A woman whose fiancé died nearly a year ago after being found in a back lane on Notre Dame Avenue is calling on Winnipeg homicide detectives to release more information about his case.
Taylor Kowalenko-Caribou’s life hasn’t been the same since she took the call that informed her 23-year-old Leo Amos Caribou was dead.
“Leo was everything, in a sentence,” Kowalenko-Caribou said. “He was my best friend for three years before we started dating and we were together for seven years. So he was like my life, my everything. Like adulthood is weird without him because we grew up together.”
Officers were called to the back lane on May 14, 2024, when Caribou was found injured and unresponsive. They provided emergency medical care before an ambulance arrived.
Caribou was taken to hospital in critical condition, where he was later pronounced dead.
Kowalenko-Caribou says it’s been especially difficult to watch the impact it’s had on their two kids, Alessia and Leo.
“She cries for him at night,” Kowalenko-Caribou said of Alessia. “She has a teddy bear with his voice in it that she listens to every single day. I don’t think I’ve seen pain in a child like I’ve seen in my own child.”
Kowalenko-Caribou wants more information from police, and says she still hasn’t received a cause of death.
“I feel like that’s something that is really hard, to cope with the passing of somebody and you don’t even know how they passed,” she said.
“If every child matters, why does Leo not matter? Why do his children not matter, who lost their father?
“I know sometimes he may not have been involved with necessarily the right people, but I wish I knew who those people were because they deserve to be behind bars for the rest of their lives.”
She says investigators told her early in the investigation there was CCTV footage, and she wants police to release photos of possible suspects.
In a brief statement, Winnipeg police told CityNews, “Investigators continue to deal with Caribou’s next of kin. And they have no further details to provide at this time.”
Kowalenko-Caribou will hold a demand for justice rally next Wednesday – at the corner of Notre Dame and Isabel Street – on the one-year anniversary of Caribou’s death. She’s also hoping to bring more attention to missing and murdered Indigenous men and boys.
