‘My baby’: Relatives of Alberta girl dead in hockey bag give victim impact statements

EDMONTON — Family of an eight-year-old girl found dead in a hockey bag in central Alberta cried while reading victim impact statements at the start of a sentencing hearing Wednesday for the woman charged in the killing.

They said Nina Napope was kind and loving and that her siblings wonder where she is.

“When you go outside and feel the warmth of the sun on your skin, that was Nina,” Napope’s father wrote in a statement read in an Edmonton courtroom by the girl’s grandmother, Starr Dumais.

“My baby Nina was so full of life. She loved to dance and sing.”

Dumais said in her own statement that Nina was her first grandchild.

“I watched her go through her first step, first word, first expression,” Dumais told the hearing.

“My heart is shattered.”

The girl’s body was found in the hockey bag in the back of a truck on the Samson Cree Nation in Maskwacis, south of Edmonton, in 2023.

A judge lifted a publication ban on the girl’s identity Wednesday, at the request of Napope’s family.

Court heard the girl suffered from chronic abuse and neglect while in the care of Ashley Rattlesnake. The woman pleaded guilty last year to manslaughter.

Rattlesnake was drinking alcohol and using methamphetamine the night of the killing. Nina was found lying on the floor bleeding next to a hole in the wall, but it’s not known how she sustained her fatal head injury.

An autopsy showed she had multiple broken bones and injuries, some which had previously healed. She also had sepsis because of an untreated infected broken tooth, which reduced her chances of survival.

Court heard Rattlesnake didn’t call 911 and instead asked acquaintances for help. Four others were charged in the case.

Rattlesnake also cried as the victim impact statements were read in court.

Crown prosecutor Terry Hofmann asked for a nine-year prison sentence.

Defence lawyer Robert LaValley requested a seven-year sentence.

Edmonton police Chief Warren Driechel made headlines last year when, in a public letter, he urged the Crown to call off a plea deal for a possible sentence of eight years in Rattlesnake’s case.

Rattlesnake had been facing a charge of second-degree murder and manslaughter typically carries a less severe sentence.

Driechel wrote that a lesser sentence would be a travesty of justice given the horrific nature of the crime. He also warned that if a plea deal went through, police would release more details of the case so the public could form its own opinion.

The letter saw critics, including defence lawyers, accuse police of straying out of their lane. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith also weighed in, saying she was glad police tried to intervene.

Driechel later said the case reflected larger, longtime problems with prosecutors, including keeping police in the dark on key case developments.

The Crown said no plea deal had been reached.

On Wednesday, LaValley told the judge that’ll he’ll have to weigh the letter in his decision as well as the other details in the case.

“Justice, there’s a question that exists on the case before you,” he said.

“What happens when a government institution or police take steps to pressure an agency that has a quasi-ministerial role, where they create an inaccurate, misleading narrative, they threaten to prejudice individuals presumed innocent before the courts … and does so publicly and in circumstances where the other parties, that being the Crown and myself, are unable or unlikely to respond?”

Charlene Dumais, Nina’s aunt, told reporters outside the courthouse that the child’s family is looking forward to hearing the judge’s decision.

She said the family was feeling a little lighter after hearing the judge lift a publication ban on Nina’s identity on Wednesday.

“It breaks our heart still to tell her story, of what happened to her, but we are relieved and we are happy to finally yell Nina’s name,” she said.

“She was a beautiful child.”

Rattlesnake’s sentencing is set to resume on Friday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 25, 2026.

Fakiha Baig, The Canadian Press