Ontario Provincial Police are investigating grisly finds of human remains in three locations this weekend: near Barrie, Huntsville and in Toronto harbour.
In the first case, human remains were found by a resident on a street that is under development in Oro-Medonte Township, northeast of Barrie. “This area where the body was located is in a subdivision where there aren’t any homes built. There’s a gravel road in that area and there’s some utilities there,” said Const. Peter Leon. “I’ve spoken with a couple of people at the scene myself and they were concerned, obviously,” he said.
In the second case, a citizen found human remains in a ditch on a road in Lake of Bays Township, also on Saturday. The remains were removed from the scene late Saturday night.
Post-mortems will be conducted in Toronto to determine the cause of death in each case. No further details on the remains were released. Leon says it’s too early to speculate whether the cases were related. “The gender, or even an approximate age, has not yet been determined on these human remains,” said Leon.
On Sunday afternoon, Toronto police divers pulled a body from the city’s Lake Ontario harbour.The body was encased in concrete and stuffed into a steel barrel. Police say that they have a “good idea” of the identity of the victim, but refused to speculate until the coroner’s office has examined the remains.
Police divers discovered the barrel near Queen’s Quay and Jarvis Street, near the Redpath sugar refinery. Police spokesperson Tony Vella won’t say how they were led to the scene except that they were acting on a tip. The marine unit was called in to assist the homicide squad team in pulling the extremely heavy barrel out of the water. It was transported to the coroner’s office for examination. It would take 2-3 days for the coroner’s office to make an identification.
Police won’t confirm the gender of this person but they don’t believe it is a child. They say that they may know its identity but don’t want to speculate until it can been proven. “It’s my belief there’s a victim of a murder, encased in concrete, within that barrel,” said Det. Justin Vander Heyden, though he refused say what information led police to the site. Investigators said the body was retrieved from about seven metres of water close to shore. “This isn’t something that [was] done by a single person. Obviously, that barrel full of concrete is going to weigh quite some amount of weight, so I speculate [there was] some sort of organized effort to get this body here,” said Vander Heyden.