Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said on Jan. 26, 2026, that the search of Winnipeg’s Brady Road landfill for the remains of Ashlee Shingoose is showing promising signs, with excavated material matching the date ranges and trucking routes associated with her March 2022 disappearance, though he cautioned there are no guarantees of success.
Searching the right zone
Excavation at the Brady Road landfill in south Winnipeg began the previous month, after the province completed tests to narrow the search area and removed and stored a layer of overburden. Kinew said searchers have uncovered material from date ranges and trucking routes that appear to line up with Shingoose’s disappearance.
Kinew later explained the technique in more detail: technicians at Brady Road are using a very similar approach to the one used at the Prairie Green landfill, checking indicators such as expiry dates on beverage cartons to date the material being sifted. “We are seeing the date ranges and the geographic ranges [when and where waste was gathered from city neighbourhoods] match our targeted zone,” he said. “So, we know we’re in the right area of the landfill. It’s now just a very time-consuming effort of searching the material to find, we hope, the remains of Ashlee Shingoose so that we can bring closure to her family.”
The search follows a ceremony at the landfill with Shingoose’s parents and her sister to mark its start in December, when the first truckload of debris was hauled to a purpose-built search facility. “I hope we will be able to bring … her home soon,” Kinew said at the time.
One of four women
Shingoose, 30, from St. Theresa Point Anisininew Nation, was one of four First Nations women killed in Winnipeg in 2022 by Jeremy Skibicki, who was convicted in 2024 of four counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. During Skibicki’s trial she was known only as Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe — Buffalo Woman — a name given by Indigenous community members; her identity was confirmed in March 2025 through DNA analysis and discussions with Skibicki after the verdict. Police believe she was his first victim, killed in March 2022, and that her body was placed in a garbage bin behind a business on Henderson Highway before being taken to the Brady Road landfill.
The remains of Rebecca Contois were discovered in a garbage bin and at the Brady Road landfill in 2022. The remains of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran were later discovered at the Prairie Green landfill north of Winnipeg, after a search of that site.
No end date yet
Kinew has been careful to manage expectations: there are no guarantees the search will succeed, and the amount of material falling within the target date range and geographic range is large. He has said the search will continue through at least 2026, with no final determination on an end date — and the province has said it intends, once the search for Shingoose is complete, to search the same landfill for Tanya Nepinak, who went missing in 2011.
For families, the slow work is the point. The January update was the first official indication that the targeted approach — proven at Prairie Green — is narrowing in on the right part of the landfill.
