Police still searching for Inuk woman who disappeared a week ago

Loretta Saunders went missing from her Halifax home Feb. 13. (HANDOUT PHOTO)

Police continue to look for signs of an Inuk woman from Labrador who has been missing after leaving her Halifax home a week ago.

Loretta Saunders, 26, originally from Hopedale, N.L. has been studying sociology and criminology at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax.

That’s where Saunders was last seen, on Feb. 13. When her family went for days without hearing from her, they alerted police Feb. 17.

“It’s not like her to disappear like this,” said Saunders’ sister, Delilah Terriak, on her Facebook page. The family said Saunders is three months pregnant.

Terriak said the last thing she heard from her sister was a brief “Hey” — a reply to a text message Terriak sent her Feb. 14. Terriak called the message “suspiciously short.”

Terriak, who lives in British Columbia, flew to Halifax Feb. 18 to spearhead a social media campaign to help find her sister, hanging posters with Saunders’ photos around the city and encouraging people to use the hashtag #FindLoretta.

“My heart is breaking more and more as time passes and my sister is the one who encourages and inspires me to persevere,” Terriak wrote. “She is a proud Inuk [whose] thesis is on missing and murdered Aboriginal woman in Canada, so she known better than to disappear like this.”

Saunders’ thesis topic makes her week-long disappearance even more surreal for her family and friends.

Police have now made links between Saunders’ disappearance and two people; Blake Leggette and Victoria Henneberry, who news reports identify as roommates who lived with the young woman in her Halifax apartment.

Leggette and Henneberry were arrested near Windsor, Ont. Feb. 18 after Ontario police found Saunders’ blue Toyota Celica parked outside a home where the pair was staying.

Halifax police plan to bring the pair back to Nova Scotia to answer to the stolen car charges, police said in a Feb. 20 release.

In the meantime, a crowdsource fund on GoFundMe.com has raised $2,850 by Thursday afternoon to help cover the family’s travel expenses and the cost of printing posters of the missing woman.

Loretta Saunders was last seen wearing dark blue jeans, a black Columbia jacket and tan boots.

Saunders is described as a fair-skinned Inuk, 5’4, about 125 lbs, with shoulder-length light brown hair and blue eyes.