Left to freeze by Canada police, Darrell Night exposed their deadly ‘starlight tours’

Darrell Joseph Night has died aged 56. The Cree man helped expose a practice of police in Saskatoon, Canada, in which they drove Indigenous people to the edge of the city and left them to die in the cold. Photograph: Dignity memorial

On a freezing winter evening more than 20 years ago, Darrell Night was picked up by police as he left a party in an apartment building in the Canadian city of Saskatoon.

As they drove him to the edge of the city, Night, who was drunk at the time, began to grow fearful. For years, he’d heard stories of so-called “starlight tours” in which the police abandoned Indigenous people in the bitter cold.