‘YOU WILL ALWAYS BE LOVED’
Ten people were killed in the rampage on Yonge St. We share six of their stories,
As the city mourns the 10 people who died in this week’s van rampage, their stories are starting to emerge. Six have been identified. Here’s what we know about them so far.
Two more victims of Monday’s van rampage have been independently confirmed by the Star, as police and the coroner work toward identifying the 10 people killed.
Betty Forsyth, a 94-year-old woman whose walker was found near her apartment on Yonge St., and Renuka Amarasinghe, a single mother who celebrated the Sri Lankan New Year one day earlier with her son, are the latest victims verified by the Star.
Their stories join those of Anne Marie D’Amico, Dorothy Sewell, Munir Najjar, and Chul Min “Eddie” Kang — who were all killed when a white rental van rammed pedestrians along a stretch of Yonge St. between Finch and Sheppard Aves.
Here’s what we know about the victims so far:
Renuka Amarasinghe, 48
On Sunday, Renuka Amarasinghe was ringing in the Sri Lankan New Year with her only son at a Buddhist temple.
But the feeling of festivity would be short-lived. Amarasinghe was struck and killed one day later.
“She (was) a very kind and generous lady. She devoted her time for the child,” said Ahangama Rathanasiri Thero, president and chief monk at the Toronto Mahavihara Buddhist Meditation Centre in Scarborough. “She made the effort to raise that child in a good manner.”
Representatives from the temple met on Tuesday night to co-ordinate fundraising efforts for her son and are planning her funeral, he said. They will be unable to repatriate her body back to Sri Lanka, where she has a mother, sister and brother, he said, adding he expects family members may come to visit instead.
Right now, her son is staying with family friends at the home where Amarasinghe had rented the basement apartment. “Friends are very helpful to her because she’s good, she’s kind,” he said. “They are very concerned about the child.”
The Lotus Youth Council at the temple is organizing a GoFundMe fundraiser for her 7-year-old son, Diyon.
Messages to Diyon poured in from dozens of donors.
“Diyon, my condolences on the tragic and senseless death of your dear mother. Nothing can replace her,” said Laurie Graham in a post. “As a mom, I know with all my heart that her greatest wish was for you to achieve your dreams and make a good future for yourself.”
Amarasinghe worked at the Toronto District School Board as a nutrition services staff member as of 2015. She was an adult student at the board prior to that, the board confirmed.
Chul Min “Eddie” Kang
There’s a picture of Eddie Kang holding his own birthday cake, a caramel lava confection, sitting in the centre of a brand new, stainless steel work station.
In front, staff have placed candles — to light his way to heaven, they said — and water for him to drink on the way. Surrounding the memorial is an ever-growing display of flowers left by coworkers and friends.
The tribute is in the basement below the dining room at Copacabana restau- rant, a Brazilian steak house on Adelaide St. W. where Kang spent most of his time working and building a reputation as a talented up-and-coming chef.
Except for the candlelit memorial, this basement is dark. This is where Kang was supposed to lead the launch of a new, affiliated restaurant called Casa Fuego that will combine Argentinian cuisine with Peruvian influences.
For the past eight months, Kang had spent hours tinkering with recipes at that workstation, dreaming up dishes that would be on the new menu.
“This was his station,” said Milan Kalkan, the Copacabana general manager, Wednesday evening on a tour of the now-empty restaurant. “This was all Eddie. His passion was in the kitchen.”
The photo of Kang holding his cake was one of the last pictures his adoring staff have of him. It was taken in March.
Staff at the restaurant are reeling from his loss. The outgoing Kang, whom they described as a generous father figure, had no known family in the city, they said.
“We were like brothers,” Gary Smith, 33, said of Kang. “He was the most selfless person I have ever met. Everybody looked up to him.”
Smith, who described Kang as having the “best” sense of humour and always being in a good mood, said they spent nearly all their working days together.
When the friends parted ways each night, Kang would express his love to them, often using the word “amore.”
Armando Sandovalzo, 30, a cook who also worked closely with Eddie, said he has been hit hard by the news. “I am angry. He was a super innocent guy,” he said. “He just had a passion for working, reading books. He was a teacher for us.”
Sandovalzo said he and the staff at Copacabana found out that Eddie was among Monday’s injured that afternoon when another chef at the restaurant got a call on his cellphone. It was from a woman who saw Eddie get hit by the van and rushed to help, Sandovalzo said, adding that the woman called the restaurant from Eddie’s cellphone.
Sandovalzo rushed to the Yonge St. scene, he said, and saw what he thought was his friend’s body, but couldn’t get close to it because police had set up a barrier.
The Star has not yet been able to find or talk to any of Kang’s family members. Staff members said they believe Kang had a wife who works out of the country and is on her way to Toronto. Copacabana staffer Karla Lopez helped set up the vigil and, in the dining room upstairs, a more subtle symbol of their grief — a single white flower in the middle of a bouquet of red roses.
“We’re really suffering because of this news,” she said.
Anne Marie D’Amico, 30
Last November, Anne Marie D’Amico was in the Dominican Republic using her vacation to volunteer with a group of colleagues to build houses for those in need.
Despite spending long days mixing cement and hauling cinder blocks, folks on the trip remember her as being “super energetic and positive and really funny,” said Dave Hamilton, manager of School Partnerships at Live Different, the group that arranged the trip.
“She was a big motivation for her team. She definitely took the opportunity and the responsibility that she had down there seriously,” he said. “She was always down for a challenge and for helping people.”
The 30-year-old was a generous young woman who volunteered with numerous charitable and athletic organizations. But she was also a pool shark who could break a board in two with a punch, a kick — or even a head-butt.
D’Amico was a member of the Young Choung Taekwondo Academy, said Master Jerome Cabanatan, and a video she posted online in 2010 showed her demonstrating her board breaking skills.
She was also part of the NTB billiards team that went to Las Vegas to compete in 2011, according to the pool hall’s Facebook page.
In the days since the attack, dozens of people have shared their memories of D’Amico online and at a memorial set up for her in the lobby of the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University, where she graduated with a degree in business management in 2010.
“Anne Marie left an undeniable mark on this world,” classmate Sarah Liberatore told the Star. “She genuinely cared for the well-being of all those around her and she dedicated her time and energy to help those who needed it most. She would want us, as a society, to continue her passion of spreading good to others.”
Dorothy Sewell, 80
Dorothy Sewell was on her way to the bank when she was killed, her family has learned. Although the 80-year-old still had a car, she lived near Ellerslie Ave. and Yonge St. and, according to her grandson, she walked everywhere.
Sewell was “the best grandma anyone could ever ask for,” Elwood Delaney told the Star. To their family, she was “Nan” — the one who’d never miss a call, whether it was for him, his wife, their kids, a birthday, Christmas, Easter or even Canada Day. Their phone would ring in Kamloops, B.C., and Nan would be on the other end ready to chat.
And Sewell’s sunny demeanour didn’t seem to fade with age, according to those who saw her regularly in Toronto. “It’s easy — when you get to be older, with all the aches and pains and things that befall you — to complain a lot. But she never complained,” said Jane Eden, who told the Star she’d lived in the same apartment building as Sewell for years.
“She was a very happy woman,” Eden said. Sewell had been a lawn bowler at their local club, she added, and very active in their community. She’d also been a voracious reader of mystery and crime novels.
“My partner used to give her a bag of books whenever she was finished reading,” Eden said.
Her other great love, according to Delaney, was sports — and Toronto sports, at that.
“She was a Maple Leafs and Blue Jays fan all the way,” he told the Star, sharing a photo of Sewell at a game with their family. Clad in a red and pink coat, the white-haired Sewell looks straight at the camera and beams.
Delaney is just glad he and his wife took the kids to visit Toronto last year. She’d be with them, he told the Star, while the family watched the Leafs in Game 7.
On Tuesday afternoon, he wrote a Facebook post about Sewell.
“You will always be loved and your love of sports will always be with me while I cheer with you. Go Toronto Go.”
Betty Forsyth, 94
The nephew of Betty Forsyth, 94, said he identified his aunt to the coroner as a victim of Monday’s van rampage.
Forsyth’s nephew, Rob Forsyth, told the Star he and one of his friends who knew the 94-year-old recognized her hair colour and her facial features. He added that at the moment his aunt is listed as unidentified victim “number 6” and that the coroner is waiting to confirm his aunt’s identify based on dental records.
Rob Forsyth said his aunt’s walker was found on Yonge St. nearby her apart- ment building at 5430 Yonge St., a Toronto Community Housing building for seniors.
A neighbour, Mary Hunt, 84, barely held back tears from her apartment on the sixth floor of the building. Hunt, who said she had known Forsyth for several years, said her friend had been strolling on Yonge St. on Monday, something she did frequently and on her own.
“That was her thing,” Hunt said. “She loved to feed the birds and the squirrels. She was coming home. She never travelled with anyone. That’s Betty.”
Munir Najjar
Munir Najjar was visiting Toronto from Jordan, on a trip to see his son.
On Facebook, a tribute from a man describing himself as a close relative calls Najjar “a good father to your family and mine.”
The Star spoke to a friend of the family in Toronto who confirmed the news.
“Omar Najjar’s father, Munir, was killed in yesterday’s Toronto (incident), and the family wants to be alone at this point. We seek prayers for his father and for all the injured and killed,” said the family friend.
He added that the Najjar family was waiting for the coroner’s office to formally identify their father, who was visiting them from Amman.