“We won’t stop looking until we find you”- Marshal Iwaasa’s family holds Lethbridge vigil

Jan 4, 2020 | 10:52 AM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – Friday, Jan. 3 was Marshal Iwaasa’s 27th birthday. But instead of celebrating with the young man, his family and friends held a vigil for him at Winston Churchill High School in Lethbridge, where he attended as a teenager.

A month and a half after he disappeared, there is still no clue as to where he might be. Iwaasa was last seen by his mother, Tammy Johnson, after visiting her Nov. 17, 2019. He was supposed to head back to SAIT in Calgary after a reading break, but never showed up.

Iwaasa’s burned out truck was found about a week later by hikers close to a trail head near Pemberton, B.C.- a town his family says he had little or no connection with. RCMP found his smashed cell phones, personal documents and a computer – along with burned clothing leading towards a nearby mainly frozen creek. Subsequent land, air, and aquatic searches did not turn up any other trace of him.

Efforts to distribute posters along the route from Lethbridge to Calgary, and to Pemberton, along with images posted during the Calgary Flames home games and requests even for gas station attendants to check their video footage for any sign of Iwaasa’s dark blue 2009 GMC truck have come up with no additional information. RCMP in B.C. have since suspended their investigation, pending any new information, and Lethbridge Police have now taken over the file.

On Friday, his family and close friends again pleaded for help. Speaking from her home in Hawaii, Iwaasa’s sister Paige told the crowd of about 150, they hoped to expand the search for the young man to Saskatchewan, and then to the rest of Canada.

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“Right now Marshal needs our help. He’s out there somewhere. We need to find him…Originally, we were focusing on Alberta and B.C. But since it’s been almost two months since Marshal was last seen, I think he could be anywhere….now our goal is to spread the word of Marshal’s disappearance throughout Canada, starting with Saskatchewan.”

Johnson also reiterated her daughter’s plea for help, which brought her to tears.

Family and friends hold pictures of 27-year-old Marshal Iwaasa

“The distance from Lethbridge to Pemberton is just over 1,100 km. When you start driving the highway, looking for Marshal, you quickly realize that this area is way too big. It’s an impossible task for us as a family, to find him on our own. However, as a community working together, as one, this impossible task becomes possible. We can, with all of your help, search every area between here and Pemberton…so we need even more help from the community, if we can.”

Family members then took turns telling the crowd stories of Iwaasa’s kindness, his love of his nieces and nephews, and what they described as his ingenuity and unique sense of humour during difficult situations.

The song “Rescue” by Lauren Daigle was played a short time later, and a moment of silence was held. Johnson described a line in the song that reads “I will send out an army to find you into the middle of the darkest night, and I will rescue you.”

“I’m asking all of us to become that army,” pleaded Johnson tearfully. “To go out, and to rescue Marshal.”

by Lara Fominoff