Thieves are heartless at the best of times, often breaking into a house and taking whatever seems valuable. But what the crooks who made their way into an Ajax home on Monday made off with was beyond price. And cops believe they had no idea what they were stealing.
A silver pendant (top left) that was stored in the home on
Clements Road East must have seemed like an item that would fetch a good price with a fence or at a pawn shop. But there was something unexpected inside that piece of otherwise ordinary jewellery - the ashes of the couple's deceased child.
The family discovered that the break-in happened sometime on Monday and were understandably upset that so many of their items were missing. But when they realized that pendant was one of them, they were heartbroken.
The bauble is all Dave and Lorraine Hutchinson have left of their infant son and they're desperate to have it back.
"It was given to my wife for her 40th birthday by one her best friends," Dave explains. "My wife took up running because we have lost a child at 16 days old. And my wife took up running for the fact that he wasn't going to be able to run. So when she was running her first race the locket that her friend had given her, I went and got the ashes from the funeral home and got them put in the locket for her so that she could run this race with him."
Lorraine recalls entering that marathon and running by the hospital where little Jonathan died. "I ran by Sick Kids," his mother remembers, "knowing he was there."
So when Dave came home intending to cut the lawn on Monday and discovered his front door had been forced open, he knew it was bad. When he discovered the pendant was one of the items missing, he couldn't stand the idea of having to call his wife at work and tell her the terrible news. But he did.
"He's already been taken from us once," he relates, choking back tears. "Now he's been taken from us again."
"That was the first thing I went for," an equally emotional Lorraine continues. "My locket was gone. I knew it. I knew it ... He's stolen from me again."
The boy was born with a rare fatal disease and only lived 16 days. It was long enough for his folks to fall in love with him. The couple now has two young children and Lorraine admits as she walked them to school on Tuesday, she eyed all the kids going by, looking to see if one of them might be wearing the locket.
No one was.
The theft occurred during the daytime hours when the occupants of the home were away. It's a quiet street and police confirm no one saw anything.
Now cops are hoping the crook has some kind of conscience and will at least return the most valuable thing he stole. "I don't think the person or persons responsible truly understand what they had," Det. Sgt. Adam Kelly tells
CityNews.ca. "They just see it as a silver pendant."
It's described as:
- Circular, about the size of a twonie,
- ¾" thick,
- Engraved with leaves and branches
- It's on a thin silver chain about 16" in length.
It contains the baby's ashes inside.
Cops just want to help them get it back, even if it means the culprit does it anonymously.
"They can call Crime Stoppers. They can walk into a police station," Kelly outlines. "I don't care if they turn it into a store and advise the owner to call police." As long as it's returned to the grieving mother and father, cops will consider it progress.
Dave Hutchinson has a message for the cold hearted thief. "I know that they're trying to get fast money somehow ... but do you guys realize what you're doing to people's lives? Look at my wife and I, we're devastated by this event. If you've got any heart or compassion out there, there's no questions asked ... That's all we have left of him."
Call Durham Police at
(905) 683-9100 or
(905) 579-1520 ext. 2524 or Crime Stoppers at
1-800-222-TIPS if you've seen what cops are calling a 'personal treasure.'