Thief steals cremated remains from vehicle

By Jennifer Majkas

Majk0004@algonquincollege.com

Brittany Ayotte was left wondering why anyone would steal her mother’s ashes after a thief emptied her car of all her belongings.

The Algonquin nursing student was devastated to discover on March 13 that her car had been broken into while she was downtown with a friend.

 She was on her way home for the weekend to visit her family, so her trunk was full. She left the car for about an hour and a half in a parking garage on Clarence Street. When she got back, a small storage compartment in the front seat of the car was open.

“I knew right away,” Ayotte said. She immediately popped the trunk and everything that had been in there, including her laptop, iPod Touch, school books, clothes, hair straightener, blow dryer, and a small urn containing a portion of her mother’s ashes, was gone.

“That’s what’s killing me the most,” Ayotte said of the stolen ashes. “It was all hidden in the trunk so I don’t know why they picked my car.”

She called the police, but they said that there wasn’t much they could do about it, beyond take down a police report. There are no surveillance cameras in the parking garage except the ones pointed at the money machines. Ayotte didn’t even find out how the crooks had broken into her car until later the next week, when a friend tried to roll down the front passenger side window.

“It wouldn’t roll down more than three inches,” said Ayotte. There was no visible damage to the car, except for the automatic window that will not roll down.

According to Ayotte, the theft has “big time affected” her. “All my notes for school, my textbooks. The other students and teachers have been really nice,” she said. However, she will still have to buy all new textbooks.

But the theft of her mother’s ashes is the most difficult to deal with. It doesn’t look like she’s going to get them, or any of her belongings back. “I keep hoping, but I just know it’s not going to happen,” Ayotte said.

Ayotte’s mother, Karen Ayotte, died on May 17, 2006. Brittany is the younger of two children who survive her.