Carol Kinnear has many questions about her daughter’s violent death and believes there is someone out there with the answers.
Sunday will be 10 years since Brianna Kinnear was shot while sitting in a truck on Oxford Street in Coquitlam and her murder remains unsolved. Every February, her mother puts a commemorative notice in the newspaper to keep her daughter’s memory alive and to encourage anyone with information to come forward and speak with investigators.
“It’s so people don’t forget,” she told The Tri-City News. “Maybe there is somebody out there who remembers or feels remorse or needs to say something.”
Kinnear has just as many questions today as she did back in 2009 when she received a call from one of Brianna’s friends informing her her daughter had been killed.
Shortly before her death, the 22-year-old received a conditional sentence for drug trafficking and was dating well-known gangster Jesse Margison. Her body was found in her girlfriend’s vehicle, which Brianna had been driving. Investigators have been unable to confirm whether the bullets were intended for Brianna or the owner of the truck, or if it was some kind of message to her boyfriend.
“I don’t know if I will ever get any answers,” Kinnear said. “I have said to [police], I am not letting you put this on the back burner. I want you to know that I still want some answers.”
Brianna’s relationship and her safety were constant topics of discussion with her mother. On more than one occasion, Kinnear said her daughter told her that women are not targeted and that she was safe from harm.
“She really thought they don’t shoot girls,” she said.
However, Kinnear noted during her weekly visits to Brianna’s home that she would often keep the blinds drawn, even when it was sunny outside.
“I know I was afraid for her,” she said. “I am sure she was afraid for herself, too.”
Kinnear is critical of how the media portrayed her daughter at the time of her death. While she acknowledges that Brianna was associating with the wrong people, “she didn’t deserve what she got.” Because of her daughter’s decisions, she said as a mother, “It is almost like you don’t deserve to mourn because they aren’t innocent victims.”
Brianna was trying to turn her life around and training to become a makeup artist. But every time she would take a few steps forward, Kinnear said, the lure of money and the lifestyle would draw her back in.
By telling her story, Kinnear hopes to discourage other young people from following a similar path so families can avoid having to endure what she has lived through over the last decade.
She worked with the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit on videos and communication pieces for their End Gang Life campaign and said today there are more resources for people looking to extricate themselves from that world.
Kinnear will occasionally receive a call from a mother whose child finds themselves in a similar situation as Brianna. She said she tries to help but admits there is only so much a parent can do. With Brianna, she said, she always made sure to keep the relationship open and avoid ultimatums that might push her child away.
“I didn’t want to lose her,” she said. “She was my only daughter. I wanted to maintain a relationship with her. I always knew she would need me at some point.”
Kinnear said she has kept Brianna’s ashes at her home, a place where her daughter had always told her she felt safe. She is waiting for charges to be laid or for the case to be closed before spreading the remains at a final resting place.
Finding the person or people responsible for Brianna’s murder may not change how she feels but Kinnear said it would help bring closure for the family.
“Anyone who loves someone who has been murdered wants that person to pay for that,” she said. “He took Brianna’s life but he also took my life. I am not the same person I was.”
@gmckennaTC
