A day after a veteran Toronto bouncer and Hamilton, Ont.-based father died in a shooting outside of a Mexican nightclub, Kirk Wilson’s mother and sister are remembering him as someone who truly cared about people.
“I think he was God’s gift sent to our family. He was the nicest person I ever knew. He would give the shirt off his back. He was generous, he was extravagant, he was just about everything,” Kirk’s mother Hazel told Global News Tuesday.
“He loved his mummy and he’ll do anything for his mummy and the rest of the family. That’s the type of person he was.”
Kirk, a husband and father of two young children who grew up in Toronto’s east end, was one of five people shot and killed outside of the Blue Parrot nightclub in Playa del Carmen around 2:30 a.m. Monday.
The nightclub was a part of the BPM electronic music festival where Kirk was working as a security supervisor.
For Kirk’s sister Sheryl, she said her brother would have wanted to confront the situation “head-on.”
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“He had no fear. He did believe there was right and wrong, and if someone is doing something wrong, he is not going to stand away. He will never run,” she said.
“I feel like he’s the kind of guy that would go through that situation and if he came out OK, he’d come back and say, ‘Yeah, well you know I was there and you know that happened.’”
Sheryl said despite her brother’s attitude toward his work, she tried to alleviate concerns for his safety.
“Actually it was just this week I said to myself, ‘You know, I’ve got to drop that. It’s been so long, he’s fine, he’s OK.’ But he always made us feel that nothing was as big a deal,” she said.
READ MORE: Kirk Wilson memorial fund supports Mexico shooting victim’s wife, young kids
As they try to process Kirk’s death, she said his family is doing well under the circumstances, but added his children are struggling to comprehend what happened.
“It was a touching moment last night when the children were told and his little daughter went to bed and said, ‘I want to FaceTime with daddy.’ It was little moments of realization and they don’t fully understand,” Sheryl said.
“For us we understand, they will learn in moments, years, two years, months, and that’s why we want to make sure that we’re here to support them forever because they no longer have him.”
A GoFundMe page has been setup to help Kirk’s family. As of Tuesday afternoon, it raised over $60,000 of its $100,000 goal.
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