Linda Davidson won’t stop fighting until she gets justice for her daughter.
Linda Davidson won’t stop fighting until she gets justice for her daughter.
The Niagara Falls resident has been pushing London police to publicly release more information about the events surrounding her daughter’s shooting death inside a northwest London apartment nearly eight months ago.
Police told her Chris Charlton, who also was found dead from a gunshot wound on Sept. 7, killed her daughter, who he was dating, before turning the gun on himself, Davidson said.
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Tiffany Gates, 30, died from a single gunshot wound to the head, according to a coroner’s report viewed by The Free Press that ruled the death a homicide. But police say privacy legislation prevents them from publicly identifying either deceased in the case or declaring whether either was the victim of a homicide.
“As far as I’m concerned, he’s getting away with murder by not being named and I’m not putting up with it,” Davidson said of Charlton. “It’s not going to happen.”
After emergency crews found two bodies inside an apartment at 565 Proudfoot Lane on Sept. 7 around 4 p.m., police said the pair was known to each other and there was no threat to public safety, suggesting they weren’t looking for any suspects.
Investigators recovered a gun from the scene and autopsies determined both deceased, whose names weren’t released, died from gunshot wounds, police said in an update one week later. Neither death was ruled a homicide.
Davidson said it was her calls that originally brought police to Charlton’s sixth-floor apartment and she believes her daughter was killed two days earlier.
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Gates had ordered a pizza on the afternoon of Sept. 5, but the pizza wasn’t brought into the apartment, said Davidson, who began calling police two days later after her daughter missed a hair appointment and didn’t show up for her shift at Crabby Joe’s restaurant in downtown London.
Davidson had never met Charlton but said she had feared for her daughter’s safety.
“I was trying to get her away from him,” she said.
Davidson renewed her push to get police to provide an update in her daughter’s death last week after provincial police publicly ruled a Jan. 31 double death in Central Elgin to be a murder-suicide. The OPP identified the two people found inside a Roberts Line home as Tanya Wiebe, 34, and Kyle Savage, 34, saying both died of gunshot wounds and Wiebe was the victim of a homicide.
A London police spokesperson cited privacy legislation – the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Community Safety and Police Act – as preventing the release of personal information to the public unless it’s related to a charge or conviction.
“(The legislation) permits an institution to disclose personal information to the public or persons affected in specified circumstances, none of which are applicable to the current circumstances,” Const. Matt Dawson said in an email.
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The OPP didn’t respond to a request for comment about the circumstances that led investigators to identify Wiebe and her killer.
Jennifer Dunn, executive director of the London Abused Women’s Centre, has spoken multiple times with Davidson about her desire for police to publicly identify her daughter and rule her death a homicide.
“She wants the public to know that,” Dunn said. “To have to feel like you need to explain how your daughter died . . . is definitely not a good place to be in.”
Identifying the victims in murder-suicides may help grieving families find closure, Dunn said.
“Maybe there’s some work that needs to be done around the privacy legislation,” she said. “But I think we need to continue talking about the severity of men’s violence against women in our community. This is one way we can help doing that.”
Davidson was feeling cautiously optimistic last week after London police Chief Thai Truong phoned her and said he would look into the issue for her.
The grieving mother also has been in contact with Megan Walker, a member of the police board who is leading a push to make femicide – the deliberate killing of women and girls – included in the Criminal Code.
“I’ll turn over every stone that I have to,” Davidson said. “Nobody can fight . . . better than a mother.”
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