Man charged with murder in death of POV woman

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GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

A young woman is dead after she was stabbed last week in Puvirnituq in front of two children, aged 10 and 11.

The children desperately tried to prevent the woman’s assailant from stabbing her repeatedly with a knife, but they were unable to stop the attack.

Alacie Moses, 20, died at the Inuulitsivik hospital on Oct. 5 after efforts to revive her proved unsuccessful.

Moses, a short, smiling woman with a bob of black hair, was starting a new job at the co-op hotel as a cleaner, but remained stuck in an abusive relationship, her family says.

Moses’ adoptive mother, Louie, said she was worried about her daughter since she began seeing a man about a year ago.

She said the young woman, who was the mother of a two-year-old girl, used to come home with black eyes and bite marks, and even went to hospital as a result of beatings.

At her mother’s encouragement, Moses tried to break up with the man, but he kept coming to the house, and the two would get back together.

“She was getting along with everybody,” Louie said after the funeral on Tuesday. She was always laughing, always taking care of my little girl.

“Then her baby [Mary] came along and she was in love with her baby.”

The Kativik Regional Police Force in Puvirnituq received a call around 10 p.m. last Tuesday saying a man had stabbed a woman, then stabbed himself.

When police arrived at the residence, Moses, covered in blood, was lying face down under a table. She still had a pulse, police said, but was not responsive.

Daniel Sivuarapik, who used to work at the hamlet office as a general repairman, was sitting on a couch with blood flowing from his chest. He resisted any attempts from police officers to intervene, saying that he did not want medical care but preferred to die.

After being taken to the hospital shortly after police arrived, Moses was pronounced dead. She had suffered multiple stab wounds to her chest, back, arms and legs.

Sivuarapik, who had apparently stabbed himself near the heart, was finally subdued and taken to the hospital as well. Although his condition was considered to be extremely serious, he survived a medical evacuation by a Challenger jet to hospital in Montreal, where he was operated on successfully.

The woman had been drinking, but, according to police, her attacker was sober.

Family confirmed that Moses had been to the police station earlier that day to ask for the most recent assault charges against her boyfriend to be dropped.

Lack of detention facilities in Nunavik is the major reason police say many offenders do not remain in detention.

Police charged Sivuarapik with first-degree murder on Tuesday.

Louie said that if anything could be learned from the tragedy, it was for people to take threats seriously, and report them to police.

“Then I guess my daughter would still be alive,” she said.