The phone rang in the early hours of April 10, 2021, changing Tracy Sims’ life forever.
It was a social worker at Royal Jubilee Hospital telling her to come to the hospital right away.
“She said: ‘Samantha’s not well and you need to be here very quick,’ ” Sims recalled, tears streaming down her face.
“I asked what was wrong. She said: ‘Just be very quick and bring someone.’ ”
Samantha Sims-Somerville, her 18-year-old daughter, was in the intensive care unit on life support.
Sims could see her only child hooked up to machines in the big glass room, while she was forced to wait for the results of her COVID test.
When the nurses finally let her in, a devastated Sims held her daughter for the last 11 hours of her young life. One of the nurses handed Sims a pamphlet with information about funeral homes. “We didn’t even know what had happened here,” said Samantha’s stepfather, John Grieves.
An autopsy would later reveal Samantha died from a toxic combination of alcohol and GHB, the date-rape drug.
Samantha’s friend, Brooklyn Friese, had also been rushed to the hospital and was on life support. Brooklyn was luckier than Samantha — she survived a near-fatal overdose of GHB and Rohypnol.
The doctor in the ICU that night told Sims he suspected foul play because two young women were on life support.
Initially, Victoria police also told Sims they believed a crime had been committed because there were two victims.
However, in September 2022, they closed their investigation without recommending charges. Based on the police investigation, the B.C. Coroners Service concluded Samantha’s death was accidental.
Sims refuses to accept that conclusion and is seeking justice for her daughter.
She believes Samantha was murdered. Further, she believes the two young women were deliberately recruited by a mutual friend, invited to a party on Yates Street with older men they didn’t know and were drugged with lethal doses of GHB. Several of the men who were there that night are known to police.
With the assistance of Victoria lawyer Donald McKay, Sims is fighting to have Samantha’s case reopened. She has filed an official 12-page complaint with the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner against the three officers who investigated Samantha’s death.
The complaint was accepted by the OPCC on Nov. 17 and will be investigated by police under the commissioner’s oversight.
In her complaint, Sims alleges that the investigating officers ignored important evidence. Sims said she gave police screenshots of text messages sent by the friend who invited Samantha and Brooklyn to the party.
The messages say the girls were drugged and names the man who may have drugged them. Sims also alleges that the officers did not look into the friend’s involvement in Samantha’s death.
Sims alleges the investigation did not move forward in a timely manner and that no investigative steps were taken between June 8 and Dec. 2, 2021.
Her complaint describes the “emotionally damaging” way she was treated by the investigating officers.
When Sims brought a photo of Samantha to a meeting so police would know what she looked like, one of the officers looked at the photo and said: “I know what your daughter looks like. I saw her at autopsy.”
Sims had horrific nightmares for months after this comment and had to go on medication, says the complaint.
Sims also said she made it clear to the officers that she was desperate to have Samantha’s belongings returned to her and also wanted to have the photos and video stored on Samantha’s phone.
But police destroyed Samantha’s backpack, sweater, necklaces, wallet, hair spray and makeup, she said.
Although one officer promised Sims she would receive the photos and videos stored on Samantha’s phone, another officer wiped her daughter’s phone, saying they had been advised by the freedom of information manager that Samantha had “an expectation of privacy” and Samantha had nude photos on her phone, the complaint alleges.
In an email, Victoria police said they cannot provide any information or interviews because of the active OPCC investigation.
Sims is also appealing the coroner’s finding that Samantha’s death was accidental. She wrote to chief coroner Lisa Lapointe months ago but has not received a reply.
In an email, B.C. Coroners Service spokesman Ryan Panton said: “It would be inappropriate to provide comment on communication that may have taken place between our office and the family of a decedent, as any such communication would be privileged and confidential.”
After Samantha’s death, Sims created a Facebook page called “Loving and Remembering Samantha Krysia” to bring those she believes are responsible for ending her daughter’s life to justice. She is helping several young women who have come forward and shared similar experiences.
The Facebook page is also part of Sims’s mission to prevent others from experiencing the heartbreak she continues to suffer.
“Samantha was a soft, gentle, kind sweet soul who had everyone’s interests at heart. She wouldn’t even step on an ant. I would get in trouble for killing a housefly,” said Sims. “She was there for everybody. She was very vulnerable and very trusting. Her family adored her.”
Samantha saw the good in everyone, said her stepfather. “We tried to warn her that not everyone had her best interests at heart,” he said. “But she’d say ‘No Mum, you don’t know what happened to them this morning,” said Sims.
Samantha attended Royal Bay High School and had just come back from England before she died. Sims had sent her there to be with her father because she was worried Samantha was going down the wrong path. But the visit had been stressful, said Sims, because Samantha’s father’s living situation had changed.
Back in Victoria, Samantha was going through a breakup with her boyfriend and having trouble with a landlord who’d thrown her belongings onto the streets.
“I was trying to sort it out for her. We were talking a lot and the last time I spoke to her I was mad. I said: ‘For God’s sake, I’m trying to help you,’ ” said Sims.
“She said ‘It’s OK, Mum. I don’t want to worry you, you’ve got enough on your plate.’ That was the last thing she said to me before she passed away.”
Brooklyn’s story
When Brooklyn Friese woke up in the intensive care unit at the Royal Jubilee Hospital in April 2021, she didn’t know what had happened.
The 20-year-old was on a ventilator, her mother standing by her bed.
“I was pretty confused and a few minutes after I woke up, my mom told me Samantha had died. I just started crying, bawling. I didn’t really know what was going on. I was in complete shock at the time,” Friese said.
Friese and Samantha Somerville had been hanging out on the evening of April 9 at the house of a mutual friend. The friend suggested they go to a party in downtown Victoria, so they took a bus to an apartment on Yates Street.
Friese said she drank some wine and Crown Royal and traded a cigarette for a shot.
“We were just drinking and all of a sudden, I just blacked out. But I didn’t drink enough alcohol to be knocked unconscious,” she said.
Her friend took a photo of Friese passed out on the couch and sent it to her own boyfriend.
“In the text, she said: ‘I’ve slapped her a million times. She’s not waking up. She’s not responding,’ ” said Friese.
But no one called an ambulance until it was too late for Samantha — a thought that haunts Friese to this day.
“Samantha was younger than me. She was 18 at the time. If she had been the only one drugged at least I probably could have saved her. That’s my biggest thing because no one else did anything.”
Friese is sharing her story because she supports Sims’s fight to have Samantha’s case reopened.
“It’s incredibly sad that you actually have to fight for justice after your child died from being drugged. But she is the only reason we could have justice.”
A Victoria police investigator talked to Friese the morning she left the hospital. She remembers she didn’t feel well. She had just awakened from a coma and nothing made sense.
Friese said she later discovered texts sent to her phone and to her boyfriend’s phone saying that she had been drugged with GHB and her drinks had been spiked.
Friese sent screenshots of these texts to the investigators, but said they didn’t reply. Much later, she received a text from the investigator saying the case was closed.
“I’ve never in my life wanted to do GHB, especially since it’s a date-rape drug, especially with a bunch of men in the house and we didn’t know any of them,” said Friese.
“I didn’t know Samantha for very long, but she was such a good person, like every time I saw her she would give me a huge hug. She was nothing but joy and love. And she wasn’t a drug user. She stayed away from all that stuff.”
Friese said the episode has “messed up my whole life.” She said she has experienced depression and lost her sense of trust in the justice system.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to fully recover if nothing happens. I’ll always live knowing justice was not served.”
Reopening the police investigation would give her hope and faith that things are being done right and other people won’t be harmed, said Friese, who no longer goes out and has not touched alcohol for more than six months.
“I know if nothing happens, they will continue to do what they are doing and someone else will get hurt,” said Friese.
“I think about it all the time and I just cry. This person, all these people are still out there.”
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