{"id":484038,"date":"2026-02-18T23:33:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T23:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/484038\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T23:33:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T23:33:11","slug":"young-woman-allegedly-killed-by-14-year-old-was-just-beginning-her-life-father","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/484038\/","title":{"rendered":"Young woman allegedly killed by 14-year-old was ‘just beginning her life’: father"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 14-year-old boy has been charged with second-degree murder in the death of a woman who was just beginning to pull her life together after spending years in the care system, her father says.<\/p>\n

Winnipeg police responded to a call at a home on Young Street near Sargent Avenue on Saturday around 7:30 a.m., where they found a woman who had died from her injuries, police said in a news release on Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Avontai Hartleib, 18, was a member of Sachigo Lake First Nation in Ontario who had been living in Winnipeg, police said.<\/p>\n

“She always had a smile. She’s always happy,” Hartleib’s father, David Hartleib, told CBC News on Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“She was just beginning her life, a new trail.”<\/p>\n

\"AAvontai Hartleib is seen with her father, David Hartleib, in an undated picture. David said his daughter was taken into CFS care before she turned one. (Submitted by David Hartleib)<\/p>\n

David first heard about his daughter’s death when his spouse got a text from a friend on Saturday.<\/p>\n

“It’s something that no parent wants to wake up to hear and just experience,” he said. “It just hurts.”<\/p>\n

David last saw his daughter during a visit in August, when they spoke about her plans for the future, including finding a job.<\/p>\n

The two kept in touch, with his daughter calling to ask for advice.<\/p>\n

“She would call me and ask me and say, ‘How do I deal with this?’ Because I didn’t grow up with a pretty life either.”<\/p>\n

\"ADavid Hartleib, right, is remembering his daughter, Avontai Hartleib, left, as a happy person who loved her siblings and was trying to pull her life together. (Submitted by David Hartleib)<\/p>\n

Child and Family Services took Hartleib into care before she turned one, and she grew up bouncing among group homes and foster homes, he said.<\/p>\n

His daughter was pressured by her group of friends and consumed drugs, he said.<\/p>\n

Despite the circumstances she lived in, she was a happy child who enjoyed drawing and loved her siblings, he said.<\/p>\n

Hartleib’s family plans to return her body to Sachigo Lake First Nation, a fly-in community roughly 560 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg in Ontario.<\/p>\n

Police arrested a 14-year-old\u00a0boy on Tuesday in connection with Avontai’s death. He’s charged with criminal negligence causing death as well as second-degree murder.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He was detained in custody, police said.<\/p>\n

‘There was more to life for her’<\/p>\n

Michelle Abraham met Avontai Hartleib in 2024, when she was 16 years old. Both built a sisterly bond and created what Abraham described as “a little family.”<\/p>\n

“I got what she was going through \u2026 how CFS is and how the group homes work and what they do,” Abraham told CBC News on Wednesday at a sacred fire held for Hartleib.<\/p>\n

“She lit up her room when she walked in,” Abraham said. “And in a blink of an eye, she got taken from us.”<\/p>\n

Abraham said she received a text message from Hartleib that said she had made it home safe on Friday, after they saw each other earlier in the day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AMichelle Abraham is remembering her friend Avontai Hartleib, who she said lit up every room she walked into. (Prabhjot Singh Lotey\/CBC)<\/p>\n

Hartleib then told Abraham she was going out. After she didn’t hear from her for over a day, Abraham said she messaged her friend again on Saturday night.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I said, ‘I hope you are doing OK,’ and I didn’t know she was gone at that point,” Abraham said.<\/p>\n

She found out that Hartleib had died after reading through the comments of a social media post on Sunday.<\/p>\n

“She didn’t deserve to go through that, because there was more to life for her,” Abraham said.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t think her life would be cut short like that, because we were just reuniting again, and I knew she wasn’t ready to go. I know my sister wasn’t ready.”<\/p>\n

\"TwoAbraham, left, said she found out about the death of her friend Hartleib, right, through social media on Sunday. (Submitted by Michelle Abraham)<\/p>\n

Ethan Tillingbell, 20, who is still under CFS care, has known Hartleib for five years. <\/p>\n

They were in a relationship together, and he said he’s now holding onto memories of time they spent together at the movies and night walks.<\/p>\n

“I’m expecting still for her to come out one day and just appear,” he told CBC at the sacred fire. “But it ain’t … happening.”<\/p>\n

With her death, Tillingbell Hartleib’s dreams of going to college, exploring the world and getting a house of her own are gone too. <\/p>\n

“She was a very good person, very strong-willed, and she always wanted to be better,” Tillingbell said.<\/p>\n

‘Happening all too often’: advocate<\/p>\n

Melissa Robinson, the missing and murdered First Nation people advocacy specialist at the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, helped Avontai Hartleib’s family let others know about her death.<\/p>\n

“I’m pretty outraged. I’m really upset. I feel for this family. Another young life gone way too soon,” Robinson told CBC News.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With gaps and a lack of resources in the care system, Robinson said deaths like Hartleib’s are “happening all too often, and there’s just not enough resources out there to support these families.”<\/p>\n

Robinson said she is also upset some of Hartleib’s loved ones got word of her death from a social media post from someone close to the family, instead of hearing directly from the Winnipeg police.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We had just lost another young First Nations girl, 18 years old, and nothing was being spoken about it on the news,” she told CBC News at the sacred fire.<\/p>\n

“It should have been the first thing that was aired that Saturday, when it happened right on Valentine’s Day.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 14-year-old boy has been charged with second-degree murder in the death of a woman who was just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-484038","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}