Mother of two shot and killed over a cigarette at Edmonton LRT station

EDMONTON — Heather Rae Thurier, the 23-year-old mother of two killed at the Stadium LRT station Friday, was shot over a cigarette, according to her family.
“It was about a cigarette, it started over a cigarette. My family asked, him, the guy, for a cigarette,” said Thurier’s sister, Nicole Gladue.

Gladue wasn’t there on Friday night when Thurier was killed, so she didn’t know how a simple request for a cigarette turned fatal for her sister — only that the man pulled a gun from his bag instead.

Police said the man fired one shot before running away. Thurier, who was hit in the head, fell face down and was pronounced dead minutes later, lying just inside the 112th-Avenue entrance to the station.Thurier’s brother was there with her Friday night and is badly shaken up from witnessing the shooting, but he described to Gladue some of what happened.

“She fell on her face,” Gladue said. “My brother was at her feet.”Thurier came from a large, close family, Gladue said. From an early age, she showed a fierce, protective attitude toward anyone she felt had wronged someone she loved.

“She was everybody’s bulldog. I remember this one time when she was three, she knocked out my brother who’s almost three years older than me, so five years older then her,” Gladue said.“She just ups and clocks him, right. He was picking on me and she got really mad. She wasn’t gonna have that.”

Thurier had a family of her own: a one-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy.

“She loved the kids, adored the kids, talked about them all the time,” said Thurier’s longtime friend, Joshua Nielsen.Nielsen met Thurier in the small town of Willingdon, around 135 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, where she lived parts of her life with her dad.

The two kept in constant contact over the years, Nielsen said.“She was always outgoing, always fun loving, liked to laugh all the time,” he said.

She had just moved to the Coliseum area of Edmonton, Nielsen said, and was excited about returning to the city.

Thurier was a regular user of the services offered by the Mustard Seed Church. She had been at the church Friday evening before she was shot to death.“She was very dear to many community members who are shocked,” said a church staff member.

The young man believed to have shot her is described as between 16 and 21 years old, around five-foot-10 and 160 pounds.Police seized LRT security footage to help with their investigation and were still searching for the suspect Sunday.

Thurier was Edmonton’s seventh homicide victim of 2010 and the third of last week.