Man, 31, dead, police officer in hospital after interaction

When police officers are involved in incidents where someone has been seriously injured, dies or alleges sexual assault, the Special Investigations Unit has the statutory mandate to conduct independent investigations to determine whether a criminal offence took place.

Man, 31, dead, police officer in hospital after interaction

Postby Thomas » Wed Aug 18, 2021 5:09 am

A 31-year-old man is dead and an Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officer is in hospital following an interaction Sunday morning in Fergus.

Now, the province's Special Investigations Unit (SIU) is investigating.

Police were called to a home on Belsyde Avenue E., in Fergus for a domestic call at 11 a.m. Sunday and officers negotiated with a man.

"At 1:38 p.m., there was an interaction with OPP officers and the man. OPP discharged a firearm and the man was pronounced dead at the scene," the SIU said in a release.

An OPP officer was taken to the hospital with serious injuries.

The SIU investigates cases where police conduct may have caused death, serious injury, sexual assault and/or the discharge of a firearm at an individual. The SIU said in this case, four investigators and three forensic investigators have been assigned.

Anyone with information about the case, including video evidence, is asked to contact the SIU at 1-800-787-8529 or through the SIU website.

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'Guns are not the answer and now my brother is dead': Family

Postby Thomas » Wed Aug 18, 2021 5:12 am

'Guns are not the answer and now my brother is dead': Family speaks out after man killed during interaction with police in Fergus

FERGUS - The family of a 31-year-old man killed during an interaction with police in Fergus on Sunday are speaking out, calling for justice and better supports for those struggling with mental health.
Alysha Bunyan says her brother, Mathias Bunyan, was shot and killed after an interaction with provincial police.

"Guns are not the answer and now my brother is dead," she said.

The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) says OPP were called to a home on Belsyde Avenue East in Fergus for reports of a domestic disturbance around 11 a.m. on Sunday.

"There was an interaction with the OPP officers and the man, he was armed with two knives," said Kristy Denette, a spokesperson for the SIU. "The OPP discharged a conductive energy weapon followed by a firearm and the man was pronounced dead at the scene."

An OPP officer was taken to hospital with serious injuries.

Mathias's family said he was struggling with mental health issues, adding they were planning to have an intervention with him this week to get him help.

"Today we were supposed to take him to have him put on a 72-hour hold in hopes to get more help for him for mental health," said Rachel Labrie, Mathias's sister. "Instead I watched my brother being carried out in a body bag."

Now, the family is looking for answers and say better support systems are needed for those struggling with mental health.

"The police had a different choice to make and it was not to discharge three bullets into a mentally ill human being's body," Labrie said.

Mathias's family described him as kind, artistic and brilliant.

"He saw beauty in everything," Bunyan said.

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Fergus man killed by police was suffering from mental health

Postby Thomas » Wed Aug 18, 2021 5:13 am

Fergus man killed by police was suffering from mental health crisis, says family

Mathias Bunyan was a beloved brother and son with three sisters and a mother who knew him as a smart and gentle eccentric who marched to the beat of his own drum.

The Bunyan family is close but Mathias had been pulling away as he suffered a downward spiral in his mental health that ended with his death.

Although he hasn’t been officially identified by Wellington OPP or the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), two of Mathias Bunyan’s sisters identified him as the 31-year-old shot and killed by police at his apartment in Fergus on Sunday.

A press release from the SIU states OPP received a call for a domestic disturbance around 11 a.m. and negotiated with a man before an “interaction with OPP officers” which led to him being shot and declared dead at the scene.

The statement said a police officer was also taken to hospital with injuries but when reached for clarification, the SIU declined to elaborate on the injury.

Wellington OPP declined to comment on this story and deferred all inquiries to the SIU, which investigates incidents involving police and civilians that leads to serious injury, death or allegations of sexual assault.

Bunyan’s sister Kimberley, who preferred to not use a last name because of her line of work, said in a phone interview that her brother was not a violent person and was a victim of a systemic problem of police interactions with those in mental health crisis.

“He’s been suffering for a while now, it’s progressively gotten worse and a lot of stuff came to light last week,” Kimberley said.

Rachel Labrie, another sister of Bunyan’s, explained the previous week he had been found outside in the middle of the day disoriented and unsure of where he was despite living in the area his whole life.

“He was lost and completely out of it and didn’t know anything that was going on,” Labrie said.

Labrie said it was through the kindness of a stranger, a woman whose door he scratched at, he was helped by being taken to hospital by police.

Labrie said he unfortunately couldn’t be held and chose to leave the hospital.

“My family had been in contact with the Canadian Mental Health Association and we were planning to do the intervention yesterday (Monday) and have him committed for 72 hours,” Kimberley said.

This intervention did not happen as he had a fatal encounter with police on Sunday.

Kimberley said it’s not entirely clear what happened, stressing they are largely in the dark based on the nature of SIU investigations, but heard from neighbours what is alleged to have happened.

From what the family understands, Kimberley said around 7 a.m. on Sunday morning neighbours at the apartment building heard Bunyan yelling and screaming in the third person.

The landlord checked on him and didn’t believe Bunyan when he said he was okay.

“My brother has lived in the same apartment for over 10 years, the community knew him, the landlords knew him and they’ve never seen him like that before,” Kimberley said.

The police were called and attended the apartment but Bunyan again stressed he was fine and refused to answer the door.

Kimberley said she believed they may have been unsure if he was alone but stressed he had just his pets with him and was only a danger to himself.

It is not known publicly what escalated the situation which led to Bunyan being shot but the family said an IMPACT crisis team should have been sent to talk to him instead of just the police, who Bunyan feared. IMPACT teams include mental health crisis workers.

Labrie said when the family heard about police activity at Bunyan’s apartment building, she called 911 and asked for a wellness check because they were concerned he was involved.

She said she also relayed his mental health treatment from days prior to the operator.

“There should have been that IMPACT team and some special people there to help my brother because he would be laying in a bed right now had they taken other measures,” Labrie said.

Kristy Denette, SIU spokesperson, said by email preliminary information showed Bunyan had two knives and a conductive energy weapon was discharged prior to the shooting. The SIU otherwise had no further details to share about this incident while they investigate.

Labrie said regardless if her brother had a weapon, he could have been immobilized in a different way.

“He could be in a hospital bed, strapped to a bed right now getting the mental help he needed,” Labrie said.

“I don’t believe that several officers have to put three bullets in someone’s chest when they’re dealing with someone’s mental health.”

Labrie stressed more funding and training is needed for officers to deal with mental health crises to avoid another family experiencing a loss.

Kimberley said seeing negative social media comments about this has made her realize society as a whole needs help.

“People forget this is our brother, my mother lost her son, three sisters don’t have their brother anymore,” Kimberley said.

“People are so insensitive and they’re so willing to jump on the side of the law and if there’s a problem, there’s a problem and now we’re going to stand up. We couldn’t save my brother, it was too late for us to save him, but fuck everybody else, we’re going to save other people.”

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OPP officer who fatally shot Fergus man in crisis 'acted rea

Postby Thomas » Mon Dec 20, 2021 4:28 pm

OPP officer who fatally shot Fergus man in crisis 'acted reasonably' and won't face charges: SIU

Officer fired at the victim to defend himself' from 'potentially deadly knife attack,' report says

An Ontario Provincial Police officer who fatally shot a man experiencing a mental health crisis in Fergus last August will not be charged, the Special Investigations Unit says.

On the morning of Aug. 15, police were called to an apartment in Fergus after neighbours reported hearing a person yelling and causing a disturbance. Before they arrived, officers were told that there had been several mental health calls connected to a man living in that apartment, beginning about 10 months before, the SIU report says.

A transcript of the 76 minutes prior to the shooting shows that the man inside the apartment repeatedly asked officers to leave — and highlights his increasing distress as they do not, as he said he worries they might kill him. Then, he approached one of the officers with two knives and was shot four times.

The SIU director says his investigation found that the officer acted in his own defence, saying he fired at the man to prevent getting stabbed.

"I am also satisfied that the shooting constituted legally authorized force," Joseph Martino said in the report. Neither the officer nor the victim are named in the report.

Two officers first entered the Fergus apartment just after noon that August day and found a 31-year-old man had barricaded the living room entrance. The man was hiding in a closet, the report says.

One of the officers reported seeing the man with two knives. The officers tried to talk to the man, asking him to get out of the closet and said they were there to make sure he was OK.

Although the officers tried repeatedly to get the man to leave the closet, he refused and instead kept asking them to leave. They sent a stream of pepper spray into the confined space, according to the report, but the man didn't move.

The scene captured by the report is one of increasing agitation: the man keeps ask police to go, tells them he has suicidal thoughts and that he thinks the officers might harm him.

But police tell him they cannot leave until they see the man and speak to him.

Officers at the scene called for help from police negotiations and the emergency response team, but were told that only members of the emergency response team — a tactical and containment unit — were available and on the way.

When the man left the closet at 1:30 p.m., the report said he moved around the bed "in a bent forward position" before he "came at" one of the officers with a knife in each hand.

An officer fired four shots at him at close range, the sounds of which are captured on a body-worn camera — and the man fell forward.

Paramedics tried to save his life on the floor of the living room, but he was pronounced dead at 1:47 p.m.

The officer who shot the man had a small cut to his left bicep, the report said.

Martino said there's "little doubt" the officer's actions were appropriate given the threat of the knives.

"Caught in the tight confines of a small bedroom and with nowhere else to go, I accept that the [officer] acted reasonably to defend himself when he met the risk of a potentially deadly knife attack with a resort to lethal force of his own."

The SIU is a civilian law enforcement agency. It investigates cases where a police officer is involved in another person's death or serious injury, the discharge of a firearm at a person or an allegation of sexual assault.

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SIU clears OPP officer in Fergus, Ont. fatal shooting

Postby Thomas » Mon Dec 20, 2021 4:32 pm

Ontario’s police watchdog says there are no reasonable grounds to lay charges against an OPP officer following the August fatal shooting of a 31-year-old man in Fergus, Ont.

The Special Investigations Unit released its report on Tuesday following the incident that happened inside the man’s apartment on Belsyde Avenue on Aug. 15.

Officers were called to the building just after 11 a.m. for reports that a man was screaming and yelling inside his unit.

The SIU noted that the man had been struggling with mental health for a number of years and that he was of “unsound mind” at the time.

When officers entered the apartment, the SIU said the man was holding knives in each of his hands and then barricaded himself in a bedroom.

The SIU also noted that crisis negotiators were not available to attend and officers with the emergency response team would take up to an hour to arrive.

The officers on scene tried to communicate with the man and eventually entered the bedroom to find the man in the closet still holding the knives.

The SIU seized body camera video of what unfolded and reported that the officers told the man that he was not in any trouble and that the officers were there to help him.

Over the course of 30 to 40 minutes, the SIU said the man refused to leave the closet and drop the knives despite commands from police, which resulted in officers using pepper spray several times to try and get him to respond.

After spraying him one final time, the man bolted from the closet and charged at an officer with the knives, the SIU said.

The report added that man was within arm’s reach when the officer fired his gun four times. The man was pronounced dead by paramedics a short time later.

The SIU also noted that as the man charged at the officer, other officers used their stun guns, which had no effect.

“At the time he fired, the officer was no more than a metre from the complainant and his knives,” SIU director Joseph Martino said in the report.

“He might also have been cut by the complainant. On this record, caught in the tight confines of a small bedroom and with nowhere else to go, I accept that the subject officer acted reasonably to defend himself when he met the risk of a potentially deadly knife attack with a resort to lethal force of his own.”

Two folding knives found in the bedroom were seized by the SIU along with three other knives found in the apartment’s kitchen.

The entire report can be found on the SIU’s website.

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SIU: no criminal charges against OPP officer who shot, kille

Postby Thomas » Mon Dec 20, 2021 4:35 pm

SIU: no criminal charges against OPP officer who shot, killed Mathias Bunyan

MISSISSAUGA – Special Investigations Unit (SIU) director Joseph Martino has determined a Wellington OPP officer will not be facing criminal charges in the police shooting death of Mathias Bunyan, according to a Dec. 14 SIU press release.

The 31-year-old Fergus man was shot and killed by an OPP officer on Aug. 15 at his Belsyde Avenue apartment building after police were called there by a person concerned about Bunyan’s behaviour.

The SIU, an agency which investigates police-involved deaths, serious injury, discharge of a firearm at a person or allegations of sexual assault, invoked its mandate and opened an investigation into police actions the day of the shooting.


Aside from official SIU statements — which Bunyan’s three sisters have previously disputed in speaking with the Advertiser — the family has been left in the dark about what exactly transpired that August day.

Bunyan’s death occurred a mere 24 hours before the family, including the sisters, had planned on having an intervention for their brother, who they say was dealing with complex mental health issues that didn’t need to result in his death.

“I’m not going to be naive enough to say that there couldn’t be some things that we’re going to find out that may be very hurtful or [saddening] to us, but we do just want the truth,” Bunyan’s sister Rachel Labrie previously told the Advertiser.

A publicly available SIU report, dated Dec. 10, offers the first official account of what occurred Aug. 15.

Providing a glimpse into Bunyan’s final moments, it is based on eight civilian and six officer interviews conducted between Aug. 15 and Oct. 15, over an hour of body-worn camera footage, police radio transmissions, officer notes, ambulance call reports, preliminary autopsy reports and other evidence.

An individual identified in the SIU report as “CW #1” was filling in as a property manager on Aug. 15 for the Belsyde Apartment building where Bunyan lived.

At 11:12am, the individual called police after being contacted by a tenant concerned with “yelling and screaming” in an apartment.

Two additional calls from separate individuals came in to police, one at 11:18am and another at 11:20am, reporting “yelling and screaming” and “profanities and cursing.”

Wellington OPP officers were dispatched for a “domestic disturbance call in progress” at 11:13am. The report does not identify any of the officers involved by name and states Bunyan had previously been flagged on police records for violence.

Police previously received “several mental health calls” related to Bunyan on Nov. 29, according to the report, and that information was relayed to officers.

All was quiet when the two officers arrived at Bunyan’s apartment door at 11:23am. Thirteen minutes later, an officer reported seeing Bunyan for seconds before the door was slammed closed and locked.

Additional officers began responding to the building but the report doesn’t state when. At 12:16pm, police entered Bunyan’s apartment using bolt cutters. Bunyan was initially nowhere to be seen and later retreated to his bedroom closet where he hid.

A body-worn camera was turned on one minute after entry was made into Bunyan’s apartment and a minute after that, audio recording began. Audio recording was turned off between 12:24 and 12:25pm and for eight seconds at 12:30pm.

Police requested the OPP Emergency Response Team (ERT) and asked about negotiators but none were readily available. According to body-worn camera footage, as detailed in the report, Bunyan was perturbed and didn’t believe the people in his apartment were police.

Between 12:37 – when officers began trying to persuade Bunyan to surrender and that police were there to help him – and 1:15pm, Bunyan asked officers numerous times to leave. Officers asked Bunyan numerous times to come out from the closet.

According to the report, Bunyan said he wanted to commit suicide, and told the subject officer – the one who ultimately shot and killed Bunyan – that the officer would be the one to kill him.

Between 1:15 and 1:28pm, Bunyan refused to drop a knife he claimed he had, officers had firearms and a conducted energy weapon drawn, and pepper spray was twice sprayed into the closet where Bunyan remained.

At 1:29pm, Bunyan emerged from the closet bent forward, according to the report, before standing and charging at the subject officer with a knife in each hand. Nearby officers fired their conducted energy weapons to no avail. (Four probes were located, of which one was lodged in the bedroom wall.)

Martino stated in the report there was “no more than a metre” between Bunyan and the subject officer.

Four shots were fired “point-blank” by the subject officer and Bunyan fell backwards, landing on his side before trying to sit up. He crawled from the bedroom as officers yelled at him to show his hands, stay down and not move.

“On my assessment of the evidence, there are no reasonable grounds to believe that the [subject officer] committed a criminal offence in connection with [Bunyan’s] death,” Martino stated in the report.

Martino added that, in his view, the force used was justified and there could be “little doubt” that the officer was protecting himself when he shot Bunyan.

“On this record, caught in the tight confines of a small bedroom and with nowhere else to go, I accept that the [subject officer] acted reasonably to defend himself when he met the risk of a potentially deadly knife attack with a resort to lethal force of his own,” the director stated.

Although the SIU originally stated an OPP officer was taken to hospital with “serious injuries,” the Dec. 10 report stated paramedics described a “small laceration to the [subject officer’s] left bicep.”

The officer wasn’t transported to hospital by paramedics, but by another officer, and Martino did not make the determination that the laceration was caused by Bunyan.

The officer who shot and killed Bunyan declined to participate in the SIU’s investigation and refused to provide notes. He was never interviewed by SIU investigators.

Martino did point out officers could have waited for the ERT to arrive, but said “it was open for them to conclude that they could not afford to wait” the estimated 30 to 60 minutes for their arrival.

“As for the deployment of negotiators to the scene … they were an hour-and-a-half to two hours away,” Martino stated.

Bunyan ultimately collapsed and died in his living room in a pool of his own blood. He was pronounced dead by paramedics at 1:47pm.

The SIU report concludes that Bunyan “died from gunshot wounds inflicted by an OPP officer.”

Nowhere in the report is there mention of the Waterloo Wellington Integrated Mobile Police and Crisis Team, a specialized mental health team which Bunyan’s family believes would have made a difference.

Now that Martino has delivered his decision stating there is “no basis for proceeding with criminal charges,” the SIU investigation is complete and the file closed.

Bunyan’s family retained a Toronto law firm earlier this year after raising $11,940, as of Dec. 14, through a GoFundMe campaign.

The Advertiser reached out to Bunyan’s family members for comment on Martino’s decision, but having previously spoken at length with the newspaper, the family elected to have their lawyers speak on their behalf.

A lawyer representing the family declined to comment for this story before press deadline, saying information would be forthcoming.

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One year after death of Mathias Bunyan, family calls for bet

Postby Thomas » Wed Aug 31, 2022 3:41 pm

One year after death of Mathias Bunyan, family calls for better mental health supports and police training

Family learning how to live again year after police shot and killed son, brother

FERGUS — At Templin Gardens on a mid-week afternoon, Sandra and Alysha Bunyan are sitting at a picnic table bordered by gardens planted with bright flowers and lush greenery.

Sparrows flitter about and passersby stroll along brick pathways through the sunshine-soaked area unaware of the weight bearing down on the mother and daughter as the first anniversary of the death of Mathias Bunyan—a son, brother, and uncle—grew ever closer.

Aug. 15 brought with it no cause for celebration.

The anniversary came and went, marked by a grief and anguish difficult even for the family to comprehend, as a mother and three sisters mourned the death of Mathias at the hands of police.

It was a little over a year ago, on that August day, that an unknown Wellington OPP officer killed Mathias by firing four rounds into the 31-year-old in his Belsyde Avenue apartment where he ultimately took his last breath.

When the Advertiser last spoke with his sisters—Alysha Bunyan, Rachel Labrie, and Kimberley Feather—they were left feeling, in their words, distraught, confused, and lost.

Their lives would become akin to a rollercoaster ride, marked by questions without answers.

In the weeks following, the sisters repeatedly invited the public into their once-private lives by speaking with reporters, at times allowing dark and revealing details about who their brother had become, intertwined with others about more joyful and innocent times, and the fondness the women felt for a sibling they describe as a “gentle giant.”

Alysha had this to say recently: “My life is now split in to two: it’s before my brother was murdered and after my brother was murdered.”

In many ways, their lives are unchanged from one year ago. The same unanswered questions remain about what exactly happened inside Mathias’ apartment, and what had gone so wrong in his life leading up to that fateful day.

There’s hope a future mandatory coroner’s inquest will bring to light more details, currently only known to police, surrounding their actions and Mathias’ subsequent death, but nobody knows when the inquest will begin.

Although healing has begun, closure at this point is unreachable. It hides somewhere in the distance; a year off, maybe two, maybe more.

However, not all progress has been stunted by the slow and inhumane churning of the legal system during the past year.

Sandra hadn’t previously been able to muster the wherewithal to participate in an interview about the killing of her son.

“I could hardly talk … I’d get a couple sentences out and then forget where I was,” she said.

And yet, here she sat: wearing oversized sunglasses, her grey curly hair fashioned, and her lips made bright with pink lipstick.

She has returned to her job at a local long-term care home, following extended time away.

Alysha, now a year older at 30, says the family is “trying to do the best we can with the circumstances that we’ve been dealt.”

“We’re still grieving every day,” she said.

The week leading up to the day Mathias was killed had been fragile.

“You have all these memories that just flood your brain, and it leaves you paralyzed and then you’re just stuck almost in this one spot,” Alysha said.

The women brought mementos of Mathias’ life, including a striped red and black touque he used to wear.

Sandra feels the fabric in her hands while talking, and bringing the touque closer to her face, she says, “Oh wow, it does smell like him, oh my God.”

“I know, it’s hard, I smell it every day,” Alysha says.

Tears begin streaming down Sandra’s face.

Mathias’ death has torn the close-knit fabric of the family.

“We’re learning how to …” Sandra begins, Alysha picking up the thought, “relive again without our brother and your son.”

“It’s tough to navigate,” Sandra says. “I am trying … but I don’t know if we’ll ever be the same together.”

Alysha—having been the first to arrive and find out her brother had been killed, the one to identify her brother in a photograph, and also to have seen photos from the Special Investigations Unit of her dead brother frozen in terror and covered in blood—was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder six months after Mathias’ death and remains on a waitlist for trauma-specific therapy over a year away.

The youngest of the siblings, Alysha was once a fun-loving, extroverted person, her sisters say.

Alysha recognizes a change in herself; leaving home is unfathomable some days.

“It’s an overwhelming feeling of emotions; you don’t know whether you want to yell, scream, or cry,” she says.

If pain easily overwhelms Alysha, her older sisters, Kimberley Feather and Rachel Labrie, who also spoke with a reporter at Templin Gardens two days later, are more stoic.

“It’s cracked our family,” Kimberley said. “We love each other and stuff, but are we the same? No, there’s a piece of us missing.”

Grief manifests differently, but feelings of guilt and helplessness are shared among the women.

In the year leading up to Mathias’ death, the family says they fought with a man they no longer recognized—both in appearance and personality—as he descended farther into what they suspect was an undiagnosed mental illness.

“There was nowhere to turn,” Kimberley said.

In the many phone calls the family made to support services, Kimberley questions why “someone didn’t help us to help him.”

The sisters describe feelings of bewilderment and helplessness and Sandra said she only received pushback when trying to help her son.

She wrestles with doubt about whether more could have been done.

“I blame him too; I’m mad at him too,” she said.

Sandra adjusts her posture and slouches, touching three bracelets around her left wrist, while looking to framed photographs of her son, where he is pictured standing upright and very much alive.

A minute of silence passes before Sandra says, “He was a decent person at one time, and he was ill.”

The family is calling for better mental health resources for families with loved ones who are struggling with mental illness, such as de-escalation coaching, how to identify and navigate triggers, and how to manage volatile relationships.

“Say to yourself: ‘This could be my family, too,’” Rachel said. “There’s got to be something done so that other families are not going to live in this nightmare.”

The family also wants to see more suitable professionals responding to mental-health related calls.

Having several officers force their way into her home, Alysha imagines, would be intimidating for her on a good day.

The sisters question why officers couldn’t have left Mathias in the closest where he had fled to, and waited for more appropriate services to arrive, rather than escalating the situation by twice pepper spraying him while he was in the closet.

A four-member emergency response team had been dispatched one minute before the first round of pepper spray was fired, according to a Special Investigations Unit report.

“They just totally changed the whole situation the minute they did that,” Rachel said. “I just feel so many things could have gone differently.”

Kimberley ultimately believes her brother was killed because of inadequate officer training and is calling for empathy and de-escalation training for police, and the use of less-lethal weapons.

“That cop didn’t wake up that morning wanting to shoot somebody, I truly believe that,” she said.

Mathias’ life, short as it was, was a blessing to the family, Kimberley said.

Though his death, she said, will be “a waste … if nothing comes of this; nothing comes of our fight.”

A year later, the shadow of grief feels more familiar, if not easier to be around.

The hardest part, the women say, is the learning process—to give themselves permission to experience joy.

“Somebody has to be here for the people that are left—we can’t die with him,” Kimberley said.

“I think the way to honour him is to love the kids, love our family, to love each other,” Rachel added.

“There’s no moving on; it’s moving forward.”

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