An Edmonton mother has been forced to relive the pain of losing her teenage son after a memorial dedicated to him was vandalized.
“I’m just devastated,” Jennifer Hussey told CTV Edmonton.
Hussey’s son Ryder died just before Christmas last year after he took a pill laced with fentanyl. He was only 18.
With his body buried in their native Wales, a small memorial was built in Ryder’s honour in Edmonton this summer -- a memorial that was recently defaced and damaged. Missing from the memorial too was a model of a Ford Mustang that was placed there as a tribute to Ryder’s love of classic cars.
“I cycle some mornings, you know, I drive there some evenings and I just go and have a chat to Ry,” Hussey said. But the damage and the theft has left her grieving all over again.
“It's as if they've taken Ryder, you know? And that sounds crazy, I know. But when I go there and I touch his stone it’s because I've got nothing else to touch.”
Hussey started volunteering with Youth Empowerment and Support Services after Ryder’s death as a way to distract herself from the pain of losing her only son. The defaced memorial now sits in her office.
Hussey is now pleading for whoever took the Mustang to return it.
“Please just give me back Ryder's car,” she said. “Nobody can give me back Ryder but it's just part of my baby.”
With a report from CTV Edmonton’s Angela Jung
