‘My heart just aches for her family and also the young women and two children who were killed as they walked to school’
A 28-year-old Toronto woman who has been identified as Christine Delisle was remembered by friends and family as kind, generous and loved her job as a food maven for a prestigious downtown restaurant.
“I grew up knowing her from when I was 11,” Thalia Forster, a friend and former roommate, told Canada’s Global News. “I grew up as her friend and now I am her niece. I miss her so much.”
With “a smile that lit up a room”, Delisle would love to come home to Toronto to cook up an Easter dinner with her nephews. “She loved everyone,” a former employer, Pierro Rossi, told the Toronto Star. “She never complained. She never made us feel like we were bothering her, she always made everyone feel comfortable.”
Toronto van attack: victims of attack identified as they were identified Read more
Delisle was killed in Friday’s van attack in Toronto’s west end – alongside eight other people, including two young children – after a vehicle plowed through a restaurant crowded with people waiting for the rush of the lunch hour.
The criminal charges of first-degree murder and attempted murder faced by the driver, Alek Minassian, confirmed that the motive behind the bloodshed was not terrorist-related.
According to police, it was Minassian’s conduct during his arrest that had compelled police to use lethal force. As the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, was preparing to hold a press conference to address Friday’s events, police said that officers fired 17 shots at Minassian.