Mom pleads for photos of dead son
Donna Snell is making a plea to the thief who broke into her car earlier this month in Vancouver: Keep the busted old laptop, but please return the irreplaceable photos of her son Alex Carpenter, who died in a crash this summer.
Snell and her fiancé David were staying the night of Oct. 12 at his daughter’s home near 12th Avenue and Prince Albert Street. She parked her burgundy 2004 Chrysler Sebring in an alleyway nearby.
The next day they found two of the car’s windows smashed and a pair of suitcases gone. One contained an old laptop loaded with photos Snell had taken of Alex over the past year, along with a journal containing entries about his childhood.
Snell regrets leaving the items in the car but said a lot has been on her mind lately. She had been meaning to make copies of the photos, she said.
“As you can imagine, I can only go through so much at a time,” the Vancouver resident said. “We were emotionally drained and exhausted.”
Snell said the thieves are welcome to keep the laptop, suitcases and clothing — she just wants the photos from the laptop’s hard drive returned. The journal would be a bonus.
Most of the photos were taken over the past year, many during a trip to Panama and on local hiking expeditions, Snell said.
Alex Carpenter, 27, was killed Aug. 13 when the Jeep that he and three friends were travelling in left a forestry road near Harrison Mills and tumbled down a 60-metre embankment. Carpenter, a passenger, died at the scene. The group was on its way to spread the ashes of a friend who had recently died in the area.
Snell has kept previous photos from Carpenter’s active life — he was an avid snowboarder, surfer and scuba diver — but desperately wants to preserve the joyous moments from their last year together.
“A picture to me is like a way of talking,” Snell said. “It’s like a little thread to a memory that you can tug and all the memories will come back.”
She described the laptop as a black HP bought in 2008, silver inside and adorned with a decal of a rose. Its battery is always falling out and taped into place. The darkbrown leather journal is embossed with Snell’s name and has a cloth cover.
She filed a report with Vancouver police but holds out hope someone has seen the laptop around the city. Anyone with information can contact Snell at findalexpictures@gmail.com.