‘A lot of unanswered questions’: Tragic end to search for Chelsea Poorman in Vancouver

A family’s search for a missing woman in Vancouver has come to a tragic end.

Chelsea Poorman was 24 when she was last seen downtown on Sept. 6, 2020 and was reported missing two days later. On Friday, Vancouver police confirmed Chelsea’s body was found outside a vacant home in the city’s Shaughnessy neighbourhood last month.

“A senior investigation team continued to look for Chelsea until she was discovered on April 22 by contractors working at a vacant house near Granville Street and West 37th Avenue,” the VPD said in a statement.

Police believe Chelsea died at the home the night she disappeared or shortly thereafter, “but went undiscovered because the house has been vacant for years.” The death is not considered suspicious.

Chelsea’s mother, Sheila, is heartbroken and says while confirmation of her daughter’s death offers her some closure, she’s left wondering what happened to her daughter.

“We don’t know how she died … She was just there and she just died without trying to call for help? That’s not Chelsea. She’s been put some dangerous situations, but she always found a way to reach out to her family. No matter what was going on, she always found a way to get out of situations and call us. For her to be just there, for who knows how long … a lot of unanswered questions,” she told CityNews.

“The exact cause of death may never be known,” VPD Sgt. Steve Addison said Friday afternoon.

Vancouver police Sgt. Steve Addison says the cause of Chelsea’s death may never be known. He says given the amount of time her body was at the property before it was discovered, “skeletal remains is all that’s left.”

“There’s no evidence to suggest that Chelsea [was] killed. There’s no evidence to suggest that her death is the result of a crime or was caused in the hands of another person,” he said.

“Certainly, her disappearance was suspicious. The fact that Chelsea disappeared, seemingly out of thin air: One minute she was on Granville Street, she was with her sister downtown, and then she was not seen or heard from again — and the fact that she disappeared and had been missing for such a long period of time certainly was suspicious. However now, with the totality of the evidence, the investigation’s been completed.”

Chelsea Poorman was last seen in Downtown Vancouver on Sept. 7, 2020. (Photo courtesy: Sheila Poorman)

As for the house where Chelsea was found, police say it’s been vacant “for a number of years.”

“The owners of the house are offshore … While the front of the house has been relatively maintained, the rear of the house is quite unkempt, quite overgrown,” Addison described.

When asked how they came to the belief she died at that location, Addison said “we can draw that conclusion based on the place and the position in which her body was discovered.”

He adds they don’t believe Chelsea ever went inside the house.

For her part, Poorman wants to know who owns the property where her daughter died.

“There were squatters. Those squatters, they must know something. How did she end up there?” Poorman wondered, adding she believes vacant homes should be regularly checked.

Chelsea Poorman’s mother Sheila (Kier Junos /CityNews photo)

When asked about such checks, Addison said they had no reason to do that.

“From time to time, if there’s a missing person who is considered to be high-risk or vulnerable, we will ask people to search out buildings or yards or vacant properties,” he said.

“But there’s no indication, in this case, there’s no way, we don’t believe, that we could have known that she was at this house. We don’t know if there’s a previous connection to this house.”

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The police investigation included a canvas of security video from the area, but Addison says there was no “reliable surveillance or security video” that would have pointed investigators to the home. He adds they checked cell phone and banking records and there was no activity after she disappeared.

Although no cause of death has been determined, the case appears to be closed.

“This is a missing persons case, and she’s no longer missing,” Addison said.

According to Poorman, Chelsea had arrived in Vancouver in July 2020 to seek help for addictions and her mental health stemming from a head injury.

“When people are depressed or have anxiety, some people self-medicate. And Chelsea was one of the people that self-medicated. But she also found help within a clinic in Vancouver. And she was looking to get into a detox and everything.”

Poorman remembers her daughter as a kind soul.

“She would give the shirt off of her back, if she had to, for somebody who needed it. She would go out of her way to help them … So caring. She wouldn’t harm anyone. That was not her nature.”

She had organized a walk through Downtown Vancouver last year, in the hopes of bringing attention to Chelsea’s disappearance.

Chelsea’s father, Michael Kiernan, spent months living in his van and driving around Western Canada, trying to find her.

When CityNews spoke with Kiernan in April 2021, he said he had driven from Saskatchewan to Alberta, and back to B.C., handing out flyers and asking people if they’d seen his daughter.

“We love her so much and she is so missed,” he said.

Kiernan wanted people to understand his daughter is more than just a face on a poster, that she is loved and missed.

“She’s kind, she’s curious, she’s polite,” he described his daughter.

“She’s just always been a beautiful kid.”

With files from Michael Williams, Ashley Burr and Tamara Slobogean