She had been missing for nearly a week, and the night before she was found dead the temperature wasn’t far above freezing.
Friends of Mavis Otuteye, 57, told CTV News that she was a religious woman and had been living in Delaware. Her friends say she did not tell them about any plans to move north, but it is believed she may have been planning to move to Toronto to live with her daughter.
She was found Friday near the town of Noyes by local and U.S. Border Patrol investigators, according to the Kittson County Sheriff’s Office. It’s believed she died of exposure.
A day earlier, someone called the Sheriff’s Office and reported that Otuteye had been missing since May 22. Chief Deputy Sheriff Matt Vig said he believes Otuteye was trying to walk across the border to meet her daughter.
Regina Otuteye, who lives in North Carolina, said Wednesday that she last spoke with her sister-in-law in March, and she “never talked to me about anything” concerning an intention to travel to Canada to see her only child. Regina Otuteye said her brother and Mavis have been separated for years, and he lives in Ghana.
While it’s not clear whether Otuteye’s effort to enter Canada involved asylum, Minnesota has become a key stop for a growing number of migrants who harbor that hope.
Frank Indome, an executive with a support group for Ghanaians in Manitoba, said he had not known about Mavis Otuteye during the time she was reported missing. Indome said his Ghanaian Union of Manitoba is “still trying to find” people in the province who have an association with Otuteye, but “there doesn’t seem to be anyone who knows her or is acquainted with her.”
Indome cautioned against assuming that Otuteye was an asylum-seeker, pointing out that “hers is not the normal profile of people we have crossing. They are usually men in their 20s. She really doesn’t really fit the profile of those leaving the U.S. for more kind [immigrant] policies.”
Indome predicted that “with the good weather that we are having, more people will be thinking of doing this.”
