Family still searching for answers almost 2 years after Erin Brooks's disappearance

When Laurie Brooks talks about her daughter, Erin, she speaks in the past tense.

Almost two years have gone by, and all that relatives of Erin Brooks know about what happened to her is that she's likely no longer alive.

Police say Brooks was likely the victim of a homicide sometime after she was last seen buying cigarettes at St. Mary's Smoke Shop on Dec. 27, 2021, at Sitansisk (St. Mary's First Nation).

But exactly what happened to her, remains a mystery.

"We don't have any closure," Laurie Brooks said in an interview.

Since her disappearance, vigils have been held, searches have been conducted in woods around Fredericton, and anonymous donors have offered up a $65,000 reward for anyone with information that leads to finding Brooks.

Family members now see Brooks, a Wolastoqey woman and member of St. Mary's First Nation, as one of hundreds of Indigenous women and girls who've either disappeared or have been murdered across Canada in recent decades.

"You read about it, you see it on TV, and you know, you feel bad for these people, but you don't truly understand until you have to go through it yourself," said Amy Paul, Erin Brooks's sister.

"It is awful."

A mother of four children, Brooks would have celebrated her 40th birthday this year, said Laurie Brooks.

Laurie said her daughter was a happy child growing up, always smiling and finding things to preoccupy herself with.

That energy would later cause headaches for her parents, when Brooks started sneaking out of the house at night, or would lose her temper, which became worse as she got older.

Laurie said that it was after Brooks had her second child at 17 that her daughter started getting involved in "the party scene."

"And it just spiralled out of control from there," the mother said,