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Pang assault victim left marks on attackers

“Most people who saw her thought she was a tourist”

ARTHUR JOHNSON

Pangnirtung’s nursing station: Crystal Smith was treated here on June 20 before being medevaced to the Ottawa Civic Hospital. (FILE PHOTO)

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Crystal Smith, who was savagely beaten by three men who broke into her home in Pangnirtung, managed to fight back and leave scratches and bruises on the faces of all her attackers, according to people close to the investigation into the violent incident.

Smith, 31, who was working for the summer for Northern Property and living in a house owned by the company, was awakened about 5 a.m. on June 20 by the three intruders, who dragged her from her bed and struck her repeatedly, breaking her jaw and leaving her with severe head injuries.

Despite her injuries, she managed to get out of the house after the men left and crawled to a neighbour’s house before collapsing unconscious on the porch.

A Pangnirtung resident said Smith’s bedroom and the neighbour’s porch were both heavily spattered with blood.

Smith is still recovering in Ottawa Civic Hospital, where she was airlifted and treated for several days in the intensive care unit.

Several family members from her home town of New Waterford, Nova Scotia, including her father, Cordell Smith, have joined her in Ottawa.

In Pangnirtung, RCMP launched one of the biggest investigations in memory, flying up seven members of the major crimes unit from Iqaluit and tracking dogs to join the four resident RCMP officers in the community.

Mayor Jack Maniapik said that he has received at least 20 calls from people who said they had information about the attack.

He said some residents are reluctant to talk to the RCMP, in part because the officers in the community are not fluent in Inuktitut. He said he passed on information to them.

Maniapik said the RCMP investigators also hired an interpreter and were assisted by the community’s bylaw enforcement officer.

The mayor said that community residents are horrified by the attack. But he continued to insist that living room and other windows in the house where Smith lived was boarded up when the attack occurred, a contention which is disputed by Jim Britton, CEO of Northern Property.

Britton, who hired Smith from the University of Calgary school of social work, where she is a student, said he was in Pangnirtung a few days before the attack occurred and the living room window was not obstructed.

“The front of the house was not boarded up,” Britton insisted,” although he did notice a couple of windows at the rear of the house had been covered up, “maybe because of the light.”

Smith was the only occupant of the house at the time of the attack. She had been hired by Northern Property to find tenants “for several very nice homes we own there which have sat vacant for some time, notwithstanding the shortage of housing in Baffin.”

He said Smith’s role was to identify prospective tenants, and, where necessary, to qualify them for assistance. “She was hired as an animator.”

Britton said that he and other Northern Property officials have been in touch regularly with Smith’s family.

Mayor Maniapik said that Smith, who had moved to his community in early May, had not made much of an impression on residents. “Most people who saw her thought she was a tourist.”

Residents are raising money to buy flowers and other gifts for Smith, and the hamlet has pledged to match any donations. Still, Maniapik does not expect to see her back in town. “If it had happened to me,” he said, “I’d be very hesitant about coming back.”

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