‘Hard to accept’: Daughter of Toronto taxi driver killed last month speaks about losing her dad

The daughter of Christopher Jung, a Toronto taxi driver fatally shot last month, is speaking out about what it felt like to lose her father.

“I never thought that I would be personally affected by gun violence,” Vannesa Jung said. “We hear stories about mass murderers, crime, school shootings — these stories all get a lot of attention. But a story like my dad’s just really completely, like, shocked me and puzzled me.”

At around 8:50 p.m., Oct. 24, Toronto police were called to the area of Pharmacy and Eglinton avenues for reports of a taxi that crashed into a fence, investigators said.

Police said officers found Jung alone in the vehicle suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.

He was rushed to hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

“It’s just hard to accept that this is what happened to him,” his daughter said.

Police had obtained judicial authorization twice to identify the youth wanted in connection with the shooting. However, that has since expired and the suspect can no longer be named.

The 17-year-old Toronto resident is wanted on a Canada-wide warrant for second-degree murder.

After a week of avoiding social media, Vanessa found a story online that was similar to her father’s.

“I looked up a driver who had died, who had been murdered in 2006,” said Vanessa.

On May 2, 2006, Mahmood Bhatti, a taxi driver, was stabbed multiple times by a passenger before the vehicle crashed into a parked car.

Bhatti was transported to hospital, where he later died of his injuries.

“And he was a father. He was a husband,” Vanessa said. “That’s when I realized, you know, I’m not alone. Someone else has really gone through this, and many other people have gone through this. And that really, really hurt.”

Christopher was a single father. Vanessa lost her mother at the age of four due to illness. She realized she shares another connection to her father because of the passing of her mother.

“It didn’t dawn on me until I started going through records and found the death certificate to my mother that my dad and I share something because I’m 39 when I lost my dad. And he lost his partner, the love of his life, my mother Nina, at 39,” Vanessa said.

She described Christopher as loving, caring, resilient and incredibly strong. But she didn’t expect her relationship with her father to end so soon. She still had so much to learn about him.

“I wanted to sit down with him at some point and record his life and know a lot more details about his childhood,” Vanessa said.

“And now I feel like I’m left with a lot more questions than answers. And I’ll kind of spend my life trying to piece together my dad’s life together with gaps that I don’t know if I will be able to fill.”

–with files from Catherine McDonald and Ryan Rocca