Two brothers, Nunavut stabbing survivors, leave hospital: RCMP

Police say they are still investigating a May 12 incident in Coral Harbour that left one girl dead and her two brothers and mother in a Winnipeg hospital. (FILE PHOTO)

(Updated, May 26, 2:05 p.m.)

Two brothers under treatment in Winnipeg for multiple stab wounds after a May 12 incident in Coral Harbour, have been released from hospital, the RCMP said May 24.

“The two children were released from hospital and are in stable condition,” RCMP media spokesperson Const. Lurene Dillon told Nunatsiaq News.

The incident remains under investigation, Dillon said.

That investigation process has been held by the condition of the mother who remains in hospital, Dillon said May 26, adding that it’s an “extremely sad situation.”

A previous RCMP update had said the two boys and their mother were in hospital in stable condition, although two of the three injured people were in critical condition.

The RCMP said May 12 that members of the local detachment had responded to a call at a residence in the Kivalliq community shortly after noon.

There, police discovered a woman, 28, and three children, all of whom had suffered “multiple stab wounds.”

Three of the four were medevaced to Winnipeg; one of the children died of injuries.

The deceased child, a girl in Grade 1, died at the nursing station in Coral Harbour, which has a population of about 1,000 people.

The mother also had two other children, a young baby boy and another son.

Sources told Nunatsiaq News that May 12 appeared to unfold normally until the woman’s husband left the house to get a snowmobile part from a neighbour.

When he returned, he discovered the terrible scene.

The mother was alone with the children at the time, sources said. Earlier that day, she had told her sister-in-law that she was “really really tired.”

Some have suggested that the woman may have suffered from postpartum depression, also called postnatal depression or “baby blues,” a type of clinical depression experienced by up to two in three women after childbirth.

Risk factors for postpartum depression include formula-feeding, a history of depression, and cigarette smoking — and women with fewer resources may show more postpartum depression and stress than those with more financial resources.

A more extreme form of the depression, called puerperal psychosis, occurs in about one to two per 1,000 women following childbirth.

In Canada, a mother commits infanticide, a lesser offence than homicide, if she kills her child while “not fully recovered from the effects of giving birth to the child and by reason thereof or of the effect of lactation consequent on the birth of the child her mind is then disturbed.”

People who feel distressed can reach the Kamatsiaqtut Help Line at 1-867-979-3333 or, toll-free, from Nunavik or Nunavut, at 1-800-265-3333.