Whenever Laura Hudson leaves her Medicine Hat, Alta. home, she carries a small velvet pouch in her purse containing her infant son’s ashes. But on Friday, during a family trip to Calgary, Laura’s purse was stolen.
“I felt like I lost my baby all over again,” she told CTV Calgary. “That's the last physical thing we had of him, and… I'm devastated.”
Hunter Hudson was almost a year old when he drowned this past May. Over the weekend, his family travelled to Calgary for a bereavement ceremony at the Alberta Children’s Hospital. Late Friday, however, Laura and her husband Nathan were playing on video lottery terminals at a near-empty Calgary pub when two women walked in, looked around, then grabbed Laura’s purse, which was sitting just steps away.
“There was no one in there… and the bartender is there,” Laura said. “What are the chances of my purse leaving in two seconds, you know what I mean?”
Calgary police are currently trying to identify the women from surveillance footage.
“It seemed really weird the way it happened,” Nathan told CTV Calgary. “You see the surveillance video and the car pulls in right the second we leave, and they come in and go out, it's almost like it was planned, but we knew nothing about it.”
Their 14-year-old son, Terrance, says it’s been hard on his mom.
“For her, it's losing him all over,” he said. “It's really devastating.”
The family, who are now back in Medicine Hat, hope the thieves have a heart and return Hunter’s ashes.
In the meantime, if you have information on the suspects’ identities or the whereabouts of Hunter’s remains, you’re urged to call Calgary police at 403-266-1234 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
With files from CTV Calgary
