Thieves take ashes of woman’s mother from Etobicoke home

TORONTO – Deanne Levicki says she’s at a loss for words thinking about whomever broke into her home and made off with her most priceless possessions, including a box containing the cremated remains of her late mother, Christine.

“I had a big stuffed rabbit looking after her and I said, oh my god, the rabbit’s on the floor and then I looked for the box and the box was gone.”

It was around 6 P.M. Monday when Levicki returned to her home on Richland Crescent near Rathburn Road and Renforth Drive in Etobicoke, after work, to discover that her house had been broken into.

Levicki says ever since her 87-year-old mother died from lung cancer in November, going home, where she lived with her mom, has been difficult.

“It’s weird, you know you come home, the house is empty, I find what I do is stay at work and that way I don’t have to come home.”

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When she does come home she says she still talks to her mother’s cremated remains which she kept in the bedroom where her mother used to sleep.

“I’d set her up on her bed, so she was still there. It’s like her presence was still there, she was in her room.”

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She was shocked to discover that thieves had made off with the ashes. They were in a sealed cardboard box inside a navy blue velvet bag with an embroidered logo for the St. John’s Dixie Cemetary and Crematorium.

Levicki says thieves left her laptop in the kitchen and other electronics, but made off with a number of pieces of jewelry her mother had given her, that were very sentimental.

“The ring she’d given me for my 16th birthday, a little pearl pendant that I got for graduating, just little things, ” she explained choking back tears.

Police are asking anyone who may have seen anything suspicious between 7 am and 6 pm Monday in the area of Richland Crescent and Clumber Road is asked to call them or crimestoppers.

Levicki is hopeful one of her neighbours will find the discarded blue velvet bag and returns it to her directly. “So if they find it, no question asked, they can leave it on the front step.”