Thunder Bay search ends with bleak update on missing pair

The search for Nodin Skunk and Ashlynn Bottle closed with no sign of where the two young people went after they were last seen together at Thunder Bay’s old Pool 8 grain elevator. Police ended the missing-persons investigation on Friday evening, but the central question in the case remains untouched: what happened after the pair entered the waterfront property on April 26?

Thunder Bay police said Skunk, 25, and Bottle, 23, were both members of Mishkeegogamang First Nation, an Ojibway community about 500 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay. Video surveillance showed them entering the former grain facility around 4:30 p.m. on April 26, and the last confirmed sighting placed them together at 5:12 p.m. at the elevator in the 400 block of Syndicate Avenue South.

From there, the search narrowed to the old Pool 8 grain elevator and the surrounding area along the Thunder Bay waterfront. Thunder Bay police later said that search was unsuccessful. The site, long abandoned and still looming over Syndicate Avenue South, became the center of an intense effort involving Thunder Bay Fire Rescue, the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service, the Ontario Provincial Police, the coroner’s office, volunteers, and searchers from several First Nations.

By Friday evening, police said Skunk and Bottle were no longer the subject of a missing-persons investigation. Nishnawbe Aski Nation and Mishkeegogamang First Nation said the matter had become a private family matter and that no further information would be released. The families thanked the responders and the many people who came together from Thunder Bay, Fort William First Nation, and across NAN territory to help in the search.

The emotional weight of the case now sits with the families, who had hoped for a different ending. Leaders from Nishnawbe Aski Nation and Mishkeegogamang First Nation said they had prayed for a better outcome, but were now facing their worst fears as the search efforts ended and the unanswered questions remained.

For true-crime readers, the bleak part of this story is not just that the operation stopped. It is that the last confirmed moment for Nodin Skunk and Ashlynn Bottle is still that waterfront elevator at 5:12 p.m., and nothing public has filled the gap between that sighting and the silence that followed.