Family of 18-year-old missing for nearly four months pleading for information

An 18-year-old has been missing from Cumberland House since May. His aunt believes he was murdered, and wants to know what happened to him.

Hazel Harris, who has been the caregiver for her nephew Seth Deschambeault since he was three months old, has put up $5,000 of her own money to give to the person who leads her to answers.

The last time Harris saw Deschambeault was when he left his home on May 22.

Harris said Deschambeault was living with her two sons now that they’re adults, partly because she didn’t want to live with three men. She chuckled as she made the joke.

On May 27, Deschambeault called Harris to get his Snapchat password. Harris gave him the code, and remembered that it was his late grandmother’s birthday.

“That was the last time I talked to him,” Harris said.

“He said, ‘I love you, Auntie,’ and I said, ‘Be safe please, and I love you, too.’ And I haven’t talked to him since that day,” she said.

On June 2, six days after Harris last heard from her nephew, police responded to the Cumberland House Cree Nation, which saw three people arrested and one person killed after an exchange of gunfire between people in a home and police.

Harris said she believes the people involved in the shootout were the last people Deschambeault was known to be with.

Just before her nephew went missing, Harris said he was stabbed and his leg was broken. She said she suspects the men involved in a shootout on the Cumberland House Cree Nation might be responsible, though she said Deschambeault wouldn’t tell her anything about his injuries.

Harris said she also suspects gangs were involved.

“The way I see it, with these guys, you do something wrong, you’re gone,” she said.

On June 6, Harris reported Deschambeault missing to police.

She said she needed to make that report to police in Prince Albert, because that was where he had been last seen.

Deschambeault has gone from simply being a missing person to his disappearance being considered “suspicious in nature,” according to a statement shared by the Saskatchewan RCMP on July 17.

Harris said she isn’t under any delusions, and doesn’t believe her nephew is coming home alive.

Despite that belief, Harris said she’s hoping that someone who knows what happened to her nephew — and where he is — will come forward. She’s staked $5,000 of her own money on it, offering a reward to any person whose information leads to Deschambeault.

“No questions asked,” she said.

Many tips have been coming Harris’ way since posting the reward but says people who have shared information with her have been called rats and snitches.

“This is where you have to tell people, ‘Who cares if you’re a rat or a snitch?’ That is why people are going missing and never being found,” Harris said. “It’s devastating when no one’s helping you.”

Some help did come in mid-September, when around 20 volunteers showed up to help search the area around Cumberland House for any sign of Deschambeault, based on a tip communicated to Harris.

“Every tip we get, we go on it,” she said.

The crew organized themselves to investigate designated areas and looked from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sept. 17 and 18.

Harris said they also went to Prince Albert to search.

In an emailed statement, the Saskatchewan RCMP said its major crime unit is still investigating “the suspicious disappearance of Seth Deschambeault, who was last seen on May 29.”

The RCMP said investigators believe Seth may be the victim of a homicide, and they are continuing to keep Deschambeault’s family updated and offer them support.

Calling the investigation “active and ongoing,” the RCMP said police have no further details to release at this time.

No one has been charged.

Anyone who might have seen or had contact with Deschambeault during the weekend of May 28 to 29 in Prince Albert, however, was asked to contact the Saskatchewan RCMP or report that information to Crime Stoppers.

Harris said Deschambeault was a good, respectful kid. He smiled a lot and spent a lot of his childhood walking around with a basketball because he loved the sport.

Deschambeault was the type of person who would remember his aunt’s friends and say hi to them when he saw them on his own, Harris said.

“He was so smart for his age,” Harris recalled, saying her nephew was reading at just two years old.

The 18-year-old would babysit his own nephews and argue with his brothers, Harris said, because brothers do that.

“But then they’d be cooking and eating and helping each other clean up, just like it never happened,” she laughed.

Harris said she knows her nephew is out there somewhere, and she wants his story told.

“Why do they think that where they put him is where he needs to be? He needs to be where he’s loved, where family’s going to know where he is,” Harris pleaded.

“He’s just a little kid. He had a broken leg. He couldn’t even defend himself. And the ones he hung with, they’re way bigger than him and way older than him.

“Please bring Seth home. That’s all we ask for.”