Some Gameti residents share responsibility in woman's death: group

As people in Gameti, N.W.T., lay to rest a woman who was beaten to death last week, a territorial women's group says residents who helped conceal the accused killer from police should share responsibility.

The body of Alice Black, 31, was flown back to Gameti late Friday morning. Family members took the body to a local church, where people gathered in the afternoon for a prayer service.

A funeral service for Black will take place on Saturday afternoon in the isolated community of 135, located about 240 kilometres north of Yellowknife.

Black was found dead on the morning of Feb. 27, with preliminary autopsy results confirming that she died of blunt-force trauma to the head.

RCMP have charged Black's common-law husband, Terry James Vital, 34, with second-degree murder in connection with her death.

Since then, police have come under fire for not arresting Vital sooner. He had been wanted for 11 months after he didn't show up to court to face charges connected with two previous assaults on Black.

But earlier this week, Gameti First Nation Chief Henry Gon told CBC News that some people in Gameti helped hide Vital when officers came out to look for him.

"What shocks me is that the people in the community would hide someone in their home," Nancy Peel, executive director of the Northwest Territories Native Women's Association, said Thursday.

"I think the responsibility lies back with the people in the community, the members that obviously hid him and harboured him in their home. I mean, in a community that small, you've got to know where the guy is."

Vital was convicted of assaulting Black twice before, in 1999 and 2004. In total, he was sentenced to five weeks in jail for both offences.

Peel, herself a victim of spousal abuse, said those who defend people who abuse their spouses do not understand the harm they are condoning.

"It cripples the individual that's being abused — physically, mentally, spiritually," she said, adding that abuse victims are forced to be "totally dependent on the person that's abusive."

Vital was also sentenced to 12 months in jail in 1999 for assault causing bodily harm, related to an incident in which his nine-month-old son suffered numerous broken bones and multiple fractured ribs.