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Shattered family seeks answers after police car hits and kills woman
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A family is searching for answers in the wake of an incident that claimed the life of a loving wife and devoted mother and grandmother.
Satyawatti Kumari Katryan, who went by Janet, was walking to Woodbine Shopping Centre in Etobicoke Saturday around 12:30 p.m. to pick up her husband’s glasses when she was hit and killed by a police car escorting a funeral procession.
The 64-year-old was mere months away from retiring from her job with The Shopping Channel and had just celebrated her 40th wedding anniversary with her husband, Newman Katryan.
“(We) are very much disappointed because where she got hit is a place where she been walking for the past 12 years and, the type of person she is, how she got hit — that had to be some unusual traffic that hit her. Not only that, she was only about a five-minute walk from her house,” said David Katryan, Janet’s brother-in-law.
Janet was born in Guyana and came to Canada with her family in 1987. She lived in Etobicoke with her husband and son Phillip. Her two grandchildren, aged 11 and 9, came to visit every weekend and for holidays.
“She’s a very loving, caring grandmother,” said David. She bought pies for her grandchildren and cooked Guyanese meals for the family whenever they came, he said.
Janet and Newman married in Guyana in 1972. He recently injured his foot, so was housebound Saturday when the collision happened. A home-care worker who visits him daily mentioned seeing accident scene when she came over, before police had contacted Newman.
The Special Investigations Unit, the province’s police watchdog, is probing into the incident.
“The family understands that this thing happened around 12:30 p.m. and the SIU, they didn’t come until about near 4 p.m. to inform the husband — he didn’t know,” said David. “All he wanted to know is how come his wife’s not coming home.”
The line of cars was travelling northbound on Hwy. 27 on the way to Glenview Memorial Gardens.
Carlton Brown was part of the procession for Roland Fletcher, his father-in-law. He reported seeing a police cruiser pass the line of cars on the left, with its lights flashing.
“She popped out in front of (the cruiser) and before he could do anything, he struck her,” Brown told Torstar News Service on Saturday. “She was in the air, flipped over a couple times, and hit the ground … She fell behind my car.”
Police are typically contracted by funeral homes to accompany processions, doing what’s known as “paid duty,” outside of the typical hours of the job.
“We hope that a thorough and unbiased investigation will be completed for the benefit of the family and also for our community so that mistakes like these do not happen frequently,” said David.
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