Saunders Family Offended by Her Photo Appearing in Kijiji Apartment Ad

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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The family of Loretta Saunders has claimed to be hurt and sought explanation after her photo was recently used in an online advertisement. A family friend who also helped search for the missing girl in February, Lisa Webb, alleged that “when I saw it, my reaction was shock because I didn’t expect to see something like that,” adding that “we wanted to use (the photo) in a happy way, not for somebody to get ahead.”

The online advert video was posted to Kijiji on Dec. 26 by someone seeking roommates. The video was viewed by almost 200 times when Kijiji removed it and banned the user from the website. A representative of Kijiji Canada, Shawn McIntyre, stated that “we’ll do everything in our power to make sure that this group doesn’t do that again.” 26-year-old student at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Saunders, went missing on Feb. 13 but her dead body was found on the side of a New Brunswick highway almost two weeks later. Consequently, the investigation led to first-degree murder charges against two of her former roommates, namely Victoria Henneberry and Blake Leggette.

Quite noticeably, Saunders met her killers through an online ad for roommates just like the one that recently used her photo. Although the Saunders’ family demanded justice and action by police, Halifax Regional Police’s Const. Pierre Bourdages stated that “these images are widely available on the Internet,” and even though “it is of poor taste, there’s nothing to show that there was actual intent from the poster.”