Details of Toronto victims - mostly women - emerge

TORONTO >> One was a great-grandmother who loved the Toronto Blue Jays. Another was a single mother from Sri Lanka. And one was a “super happy and energetic young woman” who volunteered to build homes in the Dominican Republic.

The three women were among the 10 people killed on Monday afternoon when a 25-year-old man rammed a white rental van into pedestrians on a busy Toronto thoroughfare, in what was one of the deadliest mass killings in Canadian history.

Authorities say that they will not release the names of victims until they have identified all of them — a process that could take several days.

But portraits of some of the dead began to emerge Wednesday as friends and family members shared stories about the lives cut short in an attack whose motives remain unclear.

Renuka Amarasinghe, a single mother from Sri Lanka of a 7-year-old son, was the latest victim to be identified. Her death was confirmed by John Malloy, the director of education for the Toronto District School Board, who said that she had worked at a number of schools as a nutrition services staff member since 2015.

Earl Haig Secondary School, where Malloy said Amarasinghe had just completed her first day of work, is a short distance from where Monday’s attack took place.

Elwood Delaney confirmed the death of his grandmother Dorothy Sewell, 80, in a public Facebook post on Tuesday, in which the woman he affectionately referred to as his “nan” is seen in photos with the memorabilia of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team.

Anne Marie D’Amico, 30, was the first victim to be identified. She worked at the Canadian headquarters of the investment management firm Invesco, which has its headquarters on the street where the attack unfolded.

Friends and family members described her as big-hearted, kind and altruistic. D’Amico also volunteered with Live Different, a Canadian charity, and took part in two humanitarian trips to Puerta Plata in the Dominican Republic, where she helped build homes for those in need.

Chul Min “Eddie” Kang, who worked as a chef at Copacabana, a popular Brazilian steakhouse chain in Toronto, was also among the dead.