The family of a 42-year-old Brampton, Ont. man found dead in a Cambodian hotel late last month are reeling from his unexpected death.
Vinny Bains arrived in Cambodia for the first time on June 21, four days before his body was found in a room at the Home Town Hotel on Street 172 in Phnom Penh near the popular riverside tourist destination.
“We have no idea what happened to him,” said his brother Sunny Bains from Brampton. “Police have just reported he died of a heart attack.”
The family said Vinny had no known heart issues and allege that the $4,000 he had with him had mysteriously disappeared.
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Sunny said his brother was diabetic and the results from an autopsy released Friday showed that he had died of natural causes.
Vinny worked as the managing editor of the Ajit Weekly newspaper in Mississauga, where his brother works as a news editor, and had just embarked on a four month worldwide trip looking for possible investment opportunities.
Jessica Seguin, a spokeswoman from Global Affairs Canada, told Global News that Canadian consular officials in Phnom Penh were in touch with local authorities and were providing assistance to the family as needed.
She said that further details about the case could not be released in order to protect the private and personal information of the individual.
“He was so nice, a very good son … very caring and handsome also,” Vinny’s mother, Kanwaljit Kaur Bains, told Global News. “He was very nice, very kind and very helpful to me.”
Sunny said Vinny had never been to the country before and had met with “total strangers” upon his arrival in Phnom Penh.
“The people we’re dealing with now we don’t even know them,” he said, adding they had been in contact with a Cambodian woman known only as “Sarah” and a French national who claimed to worked at the hotel named Tony Cecchini.
Sunny said his brother told his mother he was going shopping that morning, before coming back to his hotel room around 2 p.m. local time when he said he was going to take a “quick nap.”
“On the fateful day, my mom kept calling and waiting for my brother. They kept on telling her he’s sleeping, sleeping, sleeping but by midnight she said, ‘Well wake him up,'” he said, adding that his brother was then pronounced dead in the hotel room and rushed to hospital.
“We’re totally unaware as to what happened.”
Sunny said travelling was always in Vinny’s nature and he had recently travelled to Nicaragua, Trinidad and China looking for business opportunities, before landing in Phnom Penh where he hoped to open a hotel.
The family said Cecchini, who can reportedly be seen standing near Vinny’s body in photos released by Phnom Penh police, and Sarah were introduced to the family over the phone as friends of Vinny’s who were “taking care” of him, but the family said it has struggled to get information from them since.
Sunny said that after organizing an ambulance on behalf of the family, Cecchini repeatedly asked for money because he was allegedly out of work and could not provide for himself.
Global News spoke to a staff member at the Home Town Hotel in Phnom Penh who initially said Cecchini still worked at the business, then called back and said that he didn’t, before the owner of the hotel later confirmed that he was still an employee.
“I have a friend who just died suddenly in Phnom Penh… Heart attack at 43 years old.. And it pains me a lot..”
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Local expatriate blogs alleged as many as five foreigners had died at the same hotel this year, but Global News could only find reports that a 63-year-old French man named André Beausoleil died there on May 9.
Beausoleil was reportedly found dead in the bathroom of his room at the Home Town Hotel after suffering a reported heart attack and smashing his head against the shower wall, according to the Kampuchea Thmey newspaper..
“My question to my family when we talk about any foul play is can you buy false medical reports in Cambodia?” he said. “And that’s very common and that’s the reason for our suspicions.”
Sunny said his brother landed in Phnom Penh on June 21, but the hotel said he had only checked in the night of June 24 – further raising the family’s suspicions.
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“So we have no idea what transpired, there’s a lot of guessing what happened,” he said, adding that the money Vinny allegedly had with him at the time of his death has not been located. “I have a list of his belongings and there’s no money.”
The family said they feel lost and unable to determine their next step.
“My brother is gone, right? He will never come back, but there is something fishy happening,” Sunny said.
“If we can do something, yes, not for Vinny but other people. I mean, nobody goes to Cambodia to die.”
With files from Christina Stevens
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