In 2006, Aielah Katerina Saric-Auger was 14 years old and living in Prince George, British Columbia, with her family. Aielah was the youngest of six children and a member of the Leidli T'enneh First Nations. Despite moving around frequently and sometimes being separated for periods of time, Aielah, her siblings, and her mother remained a close-knit unit.
Aielah Saric-Auger (RCMP)
On Thursday, February 2, Aielah, her sister Kyla, and her brother Tim went to Pine Centre Mall to spend the day shopping and hanging out. Pine Centre Mall, located about four kilometers from their home, was the largest mall of its kind in Prince George at that time.
At the mall, Aielah and Kyla ran into some friends, and the group decided to go out drinking that night. Although Aielah tried to persuade her brother to join them, Tim decided to skip the outing and head home, leaving his sisters in the mall parking lot as they left with their friends.
What exactly happened next that night remains unknown. At some point, Aielah and Kyla were separated and went different ways. Kyla arrived home early the next morning but did not find Aielah there as expected. The family spent the entire day waiting for Aielah to come home and retraced their steps from the night before in hopes of finding her, but their efforts were unsuccessful.
On Friday morning, Audrey Auger, Aielah’s mother, went to the police to report her daughter missing. The police told her to wait 78 hours to see if Aielah would return and that she could come back to file a report if she didn’t.
The family officially filed the missing person report four days later, on February 6. During this time, they searched the city, contacted friends and family, and put up posters all over town.
On February 10, nearly a week after Aielah was last seen at the mall, a motorist driving on the outskirts of Prince George noticed something in a ditch alongside Highway 16 near Tabor Mountain and alerted the police. Upon investigation, officers discovered the body of a young woman in the ditch. The body was identified as Aielah Auger’s. She was found approximately twenty-three kilometers east of downtown Prince George. Aielah’s body was found without any clothing or belongings; the only item recovered was a necklace around her neck, which Audrey later identified as one she had given her daughter.
Police determined that Aielah had died from blunt force trauma to the head. During the investigation, police suggested that Aielah had gone to a friend’s house late that night to get a ride home. However, the friend’s mother was unable to drive her, and Aielah, reluctant to call her own mother, was seen walking toward a house known as a hangout for drug users.
Investigators looked into dozens of people known to frequent that house, but everyone was cleared. Surveillance footage from nearby areas showed two sightings of Aielah at gas stations heading in the direction of her home. The video captured her walking north on the 2100 block of Quince Street, passing the Save-On-Foods gas bar around 1 a.m. Audrey also reported that Aielah had gone to a friend’s house for a sleepover the night she went to the mall and was last seen getting into a black van. Unfortunately, none of these leads have resulted in arrests or identified suspects.
Following Aielah’s death, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) created a task force called E-PANA to investigate a series of unsolved murders along Highway 16, including Aielah’s case. The task force’s purpose is “to determine if a serial killer, or killers, is responsible for murdering young women traveling along major highways in BC” (E-PANA website)). To date, however, Aielah’s case remains unsolved, as do all the other cases along the highway included in E-PANA.
In the years after Aielah’s death, Audrey never gave up her search for answers. Each year, she walked what she called "The Highway of Hope" to raise awareness about Aielah’s murder and to honor other women who have gone missing or been murdered along Highway 16.
Audrey Auger, mother of Aielah (Prince George Citizen)
Tragically, on March 5, 2013, Audrey was involved in a fatal vehicle collision on Highway 16. The "Highway of Hope" walks continue today, now also in her memory.
