The scene at Sandy Bay First Nation, about 180 km northwest of Winnipeg, where a 30-year-old woman was found dead early Saturday morning. (JORDAN MAXWELL/QMI Agency)

WINNIPEG - A Manitoba First Nation is struggling to come to grips with the horrific murder of a single mother who was found decapitated beside a gravel road.

Police were called to a section of the main road on Sandy Bay First Nation about 8 a.m. Saturday after an area resident spotted the body of a woman lying alongside the gravel thoroughfare.

Several Sandy Bay residents identified the victim as Roberta McIvor, 30, and witnesses said they saw her head separated from her body as it lay along the roadway.

The RCMP major crimes unit and forensic identification officers worked at the scene where McIvor's body was found until late Saturday evening.

On Sunday, Manitoba RCMP spokesman Sgt. Line Karpish said Mounties are treating the death as a homicide. An autopsy was scheduled for Sunday in Winnipeg.

Mounties said no other information as to cause of death was available.

RCMP investigators and Dakota Ojibway Police Service officers continued working Sunday in the community, about 170 km northwest of Winnipeg on the western shore of Lake Manitoba.

Sunday afternoon, after the RCMP identification unit had cleared the scene, yellow police tape still marked an area of bush as Sandy Bay First Nation firefighters cleaned off the roadway and ceremonially burned several areas where McIvor's remains had been found.

Valerie Roulette, who formerly taught McIvor at Sandy Bay's Isaac Beaulieu Memorial School, visited the scene Sunday.

"There's anger, sadness," Roulette said. "It's just devastating to our community."

McIvor had a 14-year-old daughter, Justine, Roulette said.

"She always had a smile on her face," Roulette said. "She was a very happy-go-lucky girl. I don't know why someone would want to hurt her."

Sandy Bay deputy fire chief Ernest Roulette was one of the first at the scene Saturday.

"It was horrible," he said. "It's shocked the community hard. We're a close-knit community."

Roulette described McIvor as funny and outgoing, and said her daughter was her "pride and joy."

jason.halstead@sunmedia.ca