The family of the 17-year-old boy who was stabbed on a Surrey bus Tuesday evening still haven’t returned to their home.
“I can’t be at home right now. All his stuff is there,” mother Holly Indridson said.
Ethan Bespflug died following an altercation on a bus on 100th Avenue and King George Boulevard around 9:30 p.m.
“I am in complete shock,” Indridson said.
“I don’t know when that’s going to stop. I haven’t been reading anything. I haven’t seen any of the articles or anything. I just know that they were there because I’ve heard people conversating around me. So I just leave.”
Indridson said her son was on his way home at the time of the stabbing. Due to the bus strike in the Fraser Valley, Bespflug would take the bus to Surrey and she would pick him up.
She said he was very independent and loved travelling all over, using the buses to get around.
“And you think being on the bus that you’re supposed to be safe on the bus,” she added.
Indridson said Bespflug texted his best friend that there was a girl on the bus who didn’t like him on the bus and he was going to try and get off.
That was the last his friend heard from him.
“I have him on GPS,” she added.
“I was just lying in bed watching that he got to the bus stop. He was on the bus and then all of a sudden he started moving to Royal Columbian Hospital. And I was like, ‘what is going on here?’ I just got in my car and I drove as fast as I could to the hospital and I was just walking. I didn’t want to ask anybody. I just wanted to go find him. So I just like walking everywhere trying to find him. And I couldn’t find him.”
A social worker told her to go into a room and sit down but she said she didn’t want to because she knew it would be bad news.
She said she has lost so many family members recently and only had her children and a sister left.
“And I literally asked God, please never touch my children. They’re all I have. Life is so unfair.”
Bespflug has two siblings that live in Vernon and two siblings that lived with him, his mother and stepfather.
“He was the best brother ever,” Indridson said. “So kind and gentle.”
“He didn’t deserve this at all. At all.”
Indridson said she doesn’t know how to move forward.
“I don’t know how to live with this right now.”
The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team confirmed to Global News they have “established” a suspect but have not released their identity of any other details.
Bespflug’s stepfather, Michael Gallacher said they hope the investigation comes to a close “really really fast.
“We just want justice. One way or another.”
Indridson said her son was a wonderful young man. He would ask people if they needed their driveways shovelled in the winter. He would notice if his mom was having a hard day and he would offer to watch his younger siblings so she could get some alone time.
“He cared about others,” she said. “He was like my best little buddy.”
Gallacher said Bespflug would always come to his work and help or work at home.
“He was a great kid,” he said.
Indridson said this incident needs to send a message that violence like this must stop.
“This world is so cruel,” she said. People need to stop doing this. You guys want to beat each other up, why do you have to stab each other?
“People need to be watching out for each other too. If you see something happening why not try to step in?”
Indridson said she doesn’t know what led up to the altercation on the bus.
Two GoFundMe campaigns have been set up, which Indridson said will go towards her son’s funeral. She hopes to bury him alongside her mom.
“Our lives are destroyed,” she said. “There’s no coming back from this.”