‘A big teddy bear’
P.E.I. man killed Tuesday was just days away from welcoming child
BORDEN-CARLETON – When Cody Duskocy-Propper sent his sister a text Monday night, she didn’t know it would be the last time she would hear from him.
“Just hanging out with my girlfriend,” he wrote to his older sister, Trudy McKibbon.
“Just so he could say, ‘it’s my girlfriend,’ probably, is what he was doing,” said McKibbon.
“Just an hour after that is when they’re saying he got shot.”
Duskocy-Propper is the man killed Monday night in BordenCarleton. The 26-year-old Duskocy-Propper lived with his parents, but was visiting his girlfriend, Amanda Rose, at her home.
Things were still tense between Rose and her ex-boyfriend, so Duskocy-Propper had invited a friend to hang out with them, “for help, in case he needed it,” said McKibbon.
The ex-boyfriend showed up shortly after the friend left and had words with Rose outside the house.
Rose got uncomfortable and turned to go back inside, but the man forced his way in.
Before the two men could exchange a word, Duskocy-Propper was allegedly shot. The attacker fled. Police found him later in Hampton, deceased. Rose was uninjured, physically as were her two children. They are with relatives for now, said McKibbon.
“Just jealous rage, jealous exboyfriend,” she said.
Rose tried to give CPR and call 911 to save him, but he didn’t move again, said McKibbon.
“He wasn’t suffering, I guess, is the good thing, given the situation.”
Her brother was the baby of the family, “but he grew to be the biggest,” she remembers. Over six feet tall, he weighed just under 300 pounds.
“Everyone thought ‘just a big huge guy,’ but as soon as you talked to him, you just realized he’s a big, soft teddy bear,” said McKibbon.
Improbably, given the trauma of the last day, she laughed a bit at the memory of her brother’s personality.
“His favourite thing was making everybody laugh as much as
he could and never wanted anyone to be sad or upset or fighting or anything. He was just such a peaceful guy.”
Duskocy-Propper was a hard worker and liked doing basically anything outside, she said.
“Just a country boy, and as redneck as you could be. He loves fishing, and anything with a motor in it.”
He was a beer and bonfire kind of guy, she said.
“You could hear him coming a mile away, usually either music or noisy exhaust or four-wheeler – just was loving life.”
He had just bought a brandnew dirt bike, but he never got a chance to ride it, she said.
“He was a really hard worker and so lovable. He did not deserve this at all.”
At loose ends for how to help, McKibbon has set up a Go Fund Me page to assist the new baby girl from a previous relationship her brother was looking forward to welcoming. As she and Rose shared their grief on Tuesday, both realized the extent of their loss.
“I didn’t just lose by boyfriend, Cody was my best friend,” McKibbon said a grieving Rose told her on Tuesday.