The relatives of a woman found fatally stabbed inside a Scarborough apartment on Tuesday say they last heard from her on New Year’s Eve, when she told them she was planning on returning to Kenya to visit her son.
Lorraine Kerubo Ogoti, 30, was found by police suffering from life-threatening injuries inside a unit on the eighth floor of an apartment building on Birchmount Road, near St. Clair Avenue around 2 p.m.
Police said that she had been stabbed by a man and was later pronounced dead at the scene.
A 40-year-old man was found lying dead on the sidewalk outside the building. Police said that his cause of death was “blunt force trauma.”
The man has been identified by police as Toronto resident Mowlid Hassan.
According to Ogoti’s sister, Linda Oduor, police told the family that the man was Ogoti’s boyfriend. Oduor noted that she had never heard of him before.
“Honestly, I don’t know this person. We’ve been trying to check online with friends and relatives,” Oduor told CTV News Toronto. “This comes as such a shock that there would be someone who hates her so much, enough to take her life.”
Ogoti came to Toronto about a year ago from Kenya. Her sister said that she was exploring employment opportunities, but was very private about where she worked and where she lived.
She described her sister as someone with a “bubbly” and “warm” personality.
“She’s friendly and she is someone who loves people, loves the concept of family, and loved to get together with people and make new friends. That's why she actually went to Canada.”
Oduor said the last time the family spoke with Ogoti was on New Year’s Eve and that her sister was excited for 2019. Her plan was to return home to visit her four-year-old son, Moses, who lives with his grandparents.
Oduor said that she hasn’t told Moses about his mother’s death yet.
“I only said it will be okay. We’ll figure this out someday. We are there for you and we love you,” she said. “He just wonders why everybody is so quiet…why is grandma always crying.”
Oduor said that her sister’s death has been a “tough pill to swallow.”
“There's still a lot of questions, a lot of unanswered things that we do not understand, but at this moment we're just trying to put things together to give her a good final journey.”
The family has set up a GoFundMe campaign to help cover the costs of Ogoti’s funeral.