Ottawa police say they continue to search the city’s landfill for the body of Susan Kuplu-Irqittuq, a Nunavut woman who went missing on Jan. 11.
Const. Chuck Benoit said the case is now a homicide investigation and Kuplu-Irqittuq’s daughter, Lennese Kublu, is charged with second-degree murder and indignity to a body.
Kublu, 18, was arrested Jan. 25. She and her mother spelled their surnames differently in English.
Police said Kublu’s boyfriend, 28-year-old Dwight Brown, was arrested in Toronto and returned to Ottawa, where he was also charged with second-degree murder and indignity to a human body.
Both suspects remained in custody, Benoit said Tuesday.
Police haven’t said how Kuplu-Irqittuq was killed but suspect her body was disposed in a dumpster in the city’s west end before being transported to the Trail Road Waste Facility as part of regular waste collection.
Benoit said a “specially trained search team” was combing the landfill.
Kuplu-Irqittuq was originally from Igloolik, an island of about 2,000 people north of the Arctic Circle, between the Canadian mainland and Baffin Island.
She had lived in Ottawa for several years and had other children.
Her family has requested privacy at this time.
Brown faces additional charges in Toronto, also from January, of assault, theft and cocaine possession.
