‘Silent fight’

Tribe files lawsuit as Tsinigine’s family marks death anniversary

WINSLOW

Two years later, the fight for justice continues for the family of Loreal Tsinigine.

On the day that marks her untimely death, March 27, family and friends gathered at the spot where, two years earlier, then-Winslow Police Officer Austin Shipley shot the 27-year-old mother five times during an altercation.

The next day, the Navajo Nation announced it had filed a civil rights lawsuit in the case.

A stand had been arranged on the sidewalk on West 4th Street, which her family covered with candles, photographs and posters.

Tsinigine’s aunt Floranda Dempsey, cousin Alta Barnell and older half brother David John smiled and joked as they remembered the person they knew – a different person, they say, from the one described in the police report.

Shipley told investigators in a September 2017 interview that he was responding to a shoplifting call that occurred at the Circle K convenience store.

A shoplifter is not how Dempsey said she remembers her niece.

“She was a beautiful person,” she said. “It really hurts because the public doesn’t know what we lost.”

Dempsey was referring to the way some criticized Tsinigine without knowing her like she did. However much the criticism hurt, she said it was not going to deter the family’s “silent fight” for justice.

The niece she remembers was “rambunctious, silly and just really sweet,” a girl who herded sheep and rode horses on the dusty plains of Teesto, Arizona.

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