TORONTO — The father of an 18-year-old Toronto woman found dead earlier this month has been found dead in Markham.
Police identified 49-year-old Winston “Paul” Reid as the man found dead in the driver’s seat of a minivan Tuesday.
York Regional Police said an officer on patrol spotted the vehicle around 12:15 p.m. ET outside an unoccupied residence on Kennedy Road south of Eglin Mills Road. Police have not released the cause of death.
On Nov. 13, police found Simone “Shanni” Reid, 18, in a Toronto apartment without vital signs.
Investigators determined the death was a homicide and said in the days after the teen’s death they wanted to speak to her father.
Simone’s mother, Karlene Palmer, spoke to Global News from her home in Clarendon Parish, Jamaica, and said she was desperate for more information.
“I would love some answers, to know who did it and why — why, why, why they did it,” she said.
“In her last moment, if she wasn’t asleep, I know deep down in my heart she’d be crying to know I wasn’t there to help her.”
Family friend Whoston Wray said Reid was a “good dad.”
“I remember from where he was living in Jamaica, he would have to pass my house to go to school. He was the nicest guy, so I don’t know what happened, but his death has come as a real shock,” he said.
“That’s what everybody wants to know — what happened? What happened? Why this young lady was snatched away? Her dad was taken also? Nobody knows.”
Wray said Palmer was going through “a mother’s worst nightmare” in Jamaica while her daughter’s body remains in Toronto.
He started an online fundraising campaign to send Simone’s remains to Jamaica, which has since raised more than $4,500 of its $15,000 goal.
“With respect to remains going to Jamaica, that’s what the mom would want to do. The mother would want to go there and visit the grave site at times and just talk,” Wray said.
“This is the best that I can do to repatriate the remains back to her mom. Even though she might not have closure, she might have some kind of inner peace.”
Palmer, who resides in Jamaica, says she is suffering unimaginable grief.
“What I’m feeling right now,” she said. “I would not, repeat not, want this for another mother.”
With files from David Shum and The Canadian Press
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