Hairstylist Pat Fortini said he was in “total shock” when he learned of the death of his client for the past 15 years earlier this week.

“She was a lovely lady,” said Fortini, who said he saw her last Friday for her weekly appointment — she wore her hair in a bob, he said.

As she was leaving, Fortini said they bid each other farewell saying, “See you next week!”

“God willing,” he said Brady responded.

Ji Hun Kim, 22, a student from South Korea

A handwritten note addressed to Ji Hun Kim at the Olive Square memorial near Yonge St. on Friday called her “truly a kind friend with a great personality.”

“I’m so sad you had to leave us this way,” the note, written in Korean characters, read. “The time we spent together was so nice. I’m here hoping you went to a good place.”

Andrea Bradden, 33, of Woodbridge

Andrea Bradden, a member of a Slovenian Roman Catholic church in Etobicoke, filled a room with laughter wherever she went, co-workers said.

A tribute blog posted by Gartner Canada, a research and advisory company with an office located on Yonge St. between Finch and Sheppard Aves., described a bright, vibrant woman before it was taken down earlier this week, .

“Andrea’s joyful energy brought smiles, happiness and laughter to everyone who was privileged to work with her and call her a friend,” Alex Falkingham, a company vice-president, wrote. “She had the uncanny ability to make any room she walked into a more positive place, with laughter filling the room. When Andrea smiled, everyone smiled with her.”

“Yesterday was such a tough moment in my life,” another person, Daniel Parra, wrote, “just knowing that someone that was so kind, gentle, and just ‘AMAZING’ was taken away from us.”

“Andrea,” a sign placed at the Olive Square memorial on Yonge St. read Friday, “Pocivaj v miru.” The message, Slovenian for “rest in peace,” was signed by the Simon Gregorcic club, a cultural association named for a 19th century Slovene poet.

Bradden’s father, Zvonko Knafelc, confirmed his daughter was a victim of Monday’s van crash in a brief phone call Thursday.

Other family members requested privacy.

Sohe Chung, 22, of Toronto

University of Toronto student Sohe Chung is being remembered as a sweet, sincere person who loved fashion and was fiercely loyal to her friends.

“She’s an amazing friend and everyone did love her. Everyone is absolutely in shock,” said high school friend Cora Cianni, who posted a memorial to Chung on Facebook.

“There wasn’t a single person who didn’t get along with her. She was an amazing, well-rounded person.”

Chung worked at the luxury retailer Holt Renfrew, according to a LinkedIn account identified by a close friend as being authentic.

A manager at the upscale department store said that they were aware that Chung may have been among the 10 killed in the Yonge St. rampage but said it would not be appropriate to comment until family or police confirmed the death.

Born in 1995, Chung studied molecular biology at U of T, where she was a member of the university’s Korean Students’ Association.

The association posted on its Facebook page Wednesday that the van attack has affected “one of our own student members.”

A vigil is planned at the North York Civic Centre on Friday evening, one of several over the next few days.

“Although we won’t understand how the affected victims family members are going through, we will be putting together a gathering in hopes to unite the community. We encourage you to attend,” said the message, originally written in Korean.

A representative with the student association had previously confirmed to the Star that students named So Ra and Sohe Chung were hurt in the attack.

In social media, Chung is listed as friends with a young woman named So Ra. Court records show suspect Alek Minassian is charged with the attempted murder of Ra.

South Korean’s foreign affairs ministry said in a statement there “are a total of five Korean citizens among the victims, two deaths and three seriously injured.” The statement does not identify any of the victims.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is taking necessary actions by contacting the families of the victims. We will make sure to provide our full and necessary help and support for the victims and families through our general consulate in Toronto,” the statement read.

High school friend Cianni said Chung’s friends and family are grieving and is asking for privacy.

“I remember her being a genuine, kind person,” said Gabby Prieto, who worked with Chung at Sketchers in the Eaton Centre around 2014.

“She was so caring and kind. She was a great person to work with.”

Jodi Yeung said Chung was part of her close circle of friends at Loretto Abbey Catholic high school near Yonge St. and Wilson Ave.

“She’s kind of shy but when you get to know her she is really funny,” Yeung said. “She was super sweet.”

Renuka Amarasingha, 45, of Toronto

On Sunday, Renuka Amarasingha was ringing in the Sri Lankan New Year with her only son at a Buddhist temple.

But the feeling of festivity would be short-lived. Amarasingha was struck and killed one day later.

“She (was) a very kind and generous lady. She devoted her time for the child,” said Ahangama Rathanasiri Thero, president and chief monk at the Toronto Mahavihara Buddhist Meditation Centre in Scarborough. “She made the effort to raise that child in a good manner.”

Representatives from the temple met on Tuesday night to co-ordinate fundraising efforts for her son, and are planning her funeral, he said. They will be unable to repatriate her body back to Sri Lanka, where she has a mother, sister and brother, he said, adding he expects family members may come to visit instead.

Right now, her son is staying with family friends at the home where Amarasingha had rented the basement apartment.

“Friends are very helpful to her because she’s good, she’s kind,” he said. “They are very concerned about the child.”

The Lotus Youth Council at the temple is organizing a GoFundMe fundraiser for her 7-year-old son, Diyon.

Messages to Diyon poured in from dozens of donors.

“Diyon, my condolences on the tragic and senseless death of your dear mother. Nothing can replace her,” said Laurie Graham in a post. “As a mom, I know with all my heart that her greatest wish was for you to achieve your dreams and make a good future for yourself.”

Amarasingha worked at the Toronto District School Board as a nutrition services staff member as of 2015. She was an adult student at the board prior to that, the board confirmed.

She recently worked her first day at Earl Haig Secondary School, said director of education John Malloy in a statement. “We are reaching out to her loved ones to support them in any way possible.”

Chul Min “Eddie” Kang, 45, of Toronto

There’s a picture of Eddie Kang holding his own birthday cake, a caramel lava confection, sitting in the centre of a brand new, stainless steel work station.

In front, staff have placed candles — to light his way to heaven, they said — and water for him to drink on the way. Surrounding the memorial is an ever-growing display of flowers left by coworkers and friends.

The tribute is in the basement below the dining room at Copacabana restaurant, a Brazilian steak house on Adelaide St. W. where Kang spent most of his time working and building a reputation as a talented up-and-coming chef.

Except for the candlelit memorial, this basement is dark. This is where Kang was supposed to lead the launch of a new, affiliated restaurant called Casa Fuego that will combine Argentinian cuisine with Peruvian influences.

For the past eight months Kang had spent hours tinkering with recipes at that workstation, dreaming up dishes that would be on the new menu.

“This was his station,” Milan Kalkan, the Copacabana general manager said Wednesday evening, on a tour of the now empty restaurant. “This was all Eddie. His passion was in the kitchen.”

The photo of Kang holding his cake was one of the last pictures his adoring staff have of him. It was taken in March.

Staff at the restaurant are reeling from his loss.

The outgoing Kang, who they described as a generous father figure, had no known family in the city, they said.

“We were like brothers,” Gary Smith, 33, said of Kang. “He was the most selfless person I have ever met. Everybody looked up to him.”

Smith, who described Kang as having the “best” sense of humour and always in a good mood, said they spent nearly all their working days together, from kitchen preparation in the early mornings to going out socially after work with a close-knit group from the restaurant.

When the friends parted ways each night, Kang would express his love to them, often using the word “amore.” Sometimes he brought them gifts or gave them neck massages during tense kitchen moments. “He was always thinking about other people,” Smith said.

Armando Sandovalzo, 30, a cook who also worked closely with Eddie, said he has been hit hard by the news. “I am angry. He was a super innocent guy,” he said. “He just had a passion for working, reading books. He was a teacher for us.”

Sandovalzo said he and the staff at Copacabana found out that Eddie was among Monday’s injured that afternoon when another chef at the restaurant got a call on his cellphone. It was from a woman who saw Eddie get hit by the van and rushed to help, Sandovalzo said, adding that the woman called the restaurant from Eddie’s cellphone.

Sandovalzo rushed to the Yonge St. scene, he said, and saw what he thought was his friend’s body, but couldn’t get close to it because police had set up a barrier.

Other Copacabana staff rushed to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre to try and identify their friend.

The last time Kang’s wife was in town, staff said, was earlier this year for a visit. The couple had dinner at Copacabana before going on vacation in Cancun.

Copacabana staffer Karla Lopez helped set up the vigil and, in the dining room upstairs, a more subtle symbol of their grief — a single white flower in the middle of a bouquet of red roses.

“We’re really suffering because of this news,” she said.

Anne Marie D’Amico, 30, of Toronto

Last November, Anne Marie D’Amico was in the Dominican Republic using her vacation to volunteer with a group of colleagues to build houses for those in need.

Despite spending long days mixing cement and hauling cinder blocks, folks on the trip remember her as being “super energetic and positive and really funny,” said Dave Hamilton, manager of School Partnerships at Live Different, the group that arranged the trip.

“She was a big motivation for her team. She definitely took the opportunity and the responsibility that she had down there seriously,” he said. “She was always down for a challenge and for helping people.”

The 30-year-old was a generous young woman who volunteered with numerous charitable and athletic organizations. But she was also a pool shark who could break a board in two with a punch, a kick — or even a head-butt.

D’Amico was a member of the Young Choung Taekwondo Academy, said Master Jerome Cabanatan, and a video she posted online in 2010 showed her demonstrating her board breaking skills.

She was also part of the NTB billiards team that went to Las Vegas to compete in 2011, according to the pool hall’s Facebook page.

In the days since the attack, dozens of people have shared their memories of D’Amico online and at a memorial set up for her in the lobby of the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University, where she graduated with a degree in business management in 2010.

“Anne Marie left an undeniable mark on this world,” classmate Sarah Liberatore told the Star. “She genuinely cared for the wellbeing of all those around her and she dedicated her time and energy to help those who needed it most. She would want us, as a society, to continue her passion of spreading good to others.”

Her friends and family described D’Amico as the best Toronto had to offer. She was a kind and funny woman who left a mark on virtually everyone she metas the energetic character kept a busy schedule.

Besides working full-time an the investment firm Invesco, she also volunteered with Tennis Canada at the Badminton and Racquet Club and twice won a contest to accompany radio DJ Devo Brown on a trip to the Caribbean.

“She’s amazing. Kindest sweetest nicest person you’ll ever meet,” Brown said in a video tribute. “Definitely one of a kind. She already was an angel.”

D’Amico was a third-generation volunteer with Tennis Canada, the organization said in a statement, starting out as a ball girl and working her way up to committee head of Stadium Control. She was voted volunteer of the year in 2016.

“Anne Marie lived for working at Rogers Cup and seeing her fellow volunteers each summer,” wrote spokesperson Gavin Ziv in a statement. “Her passion for Rogers Cup was contagious and we are honoured to let the world know what an amazing person she was and the great things she did for others.”

Dorothy Sewell, 80, of Toronto

Dorothy Sewell was on her way to the bank when she was killed, her family has learned. Although the 80-year-old still had a car, she lived near Ellerslie Ave. and Yonge St., and, according to her grandson, she walked everywhere.

Sewell was “the best grandma anyone could ever ask for,” Elwood Delaney told the Star. To their family, she was “Nan” — the one who’d never miss a call, whether it was for him, his wife, their kids, a birthday, Christmas, Easter, or even Canada Day. Their phone would ring in Kamloops, B.C., and Nan would be on the other end ready to chat.

“You could always count on her call.”

And Sewell’s sunny demeanour didn’t seem to fade with age, according to those who saw her regularly in Toronto. “It’s easy — when you get to be older, with all the aches and pains and things that befall you — to complain a lot. But she never complained,” said Jane Eden, who told the Star she’d lived in the same apartment building as Sewell for years.

“She was a very happy woman,” Eden said. Sewell had been a lawn bowler at their local club, she added, and very active in their community. She’d also been a voracious reader of mystery and crime novels.

“My partner used to give her a bag of books whenever she was finished reading,” Eden said.

Her other great love, according to Delaney, was sports — and Toronto sports, at that.

“She was a Maple Leafs and Blue Jays fan all the way,” he told the Star, sharing a photo of Sewell at a game with their family. Clad in a red and pink coat, the white-haired Sewell looks straight at the camera and beams.

Delaney is just glad he and his wife took the kids to visit Toronto last year. She’d be with them, he told the Star, while the family watched the Leafs in Game 7.

On Tuesday afternoon, he wrote a Facebook post about Sewell.

“You will always be loved and your love of sports will always be with me while I cheer with you. Go Toronto Go.”

Betty Forsyth, 94, of Toronto

Betty Forsyth was a 94-year-old force of nature who defied her age by living independently and taking frequent long walks along Yonge St., constantly wearing out the wheels on her walker.

“I had to change them twice!” her nephew Rob Forsyth said. “She wore them down to the metal.”

Described by friends as “delightful” and a “sweetheart,” Forsyth loved to chat, visit Casino Rama and take two-hour-long strolls from her apartment at Yonge St. and Finch Ave., sometimes to Steeles Ave.

“She was 94 years young,” close friend Barbara Puckering said. “Every day she would be out and about. She was a real treasure.”

Forsyth was killed in Monday’s van rampage on Yonge. On her way back home from a walk she had stopped to feed the birds and squirrels near her apartment at The Kemptford at 5430 Yonge St., a Toronto Community Housing building.

Her walker was found on the sidewalk nearby.

Betty Forsyth, a Star Trek and Downton Abbey fan with an “exceptional memory,” friends and relatives said, was born in 1923 in Peacehaven, East Sussex, a small seaside town in England.

The second of four children, she was christened Mary Elizabeth Forsyth, but was always known as Betty, according to cousin Jacqueline Ritchie.

“It is a terrible shock,” said Ritchie, 62, who lives in Peacehaven, a town in England. “When you’re a long way away, it’s harder to accept as well.”

Maureen Williams, another close friend, met Forsyth after her mother Lillian started working for her about 40 years ago when she owned a dog grooming business on Yonge St.

Over the years, Forsyth, who did not marry or have children, became part of Williams’s family.

“She acquired strong friends as a support group,” Williams said. “Betty had an incredible capacity to see the funny side of life and laugh at herself.”

When the ladies — including Forsyth, Williams, her mother Lillian and Puckering — went on outings, sometimes to Casino Rama, Forsyth would treat them to lunch.

She’d bring joy to whomever she encountered, Puckering said.

A lifelong dog lover, Forsyth, at 14 years old, began working as a kennel maid for Lady Ionides, a member of England’s aristocracy, Ritchie said.

She went on to breed Toy Poodles for wealthy American breeders who sailed over to Southampton on the Queen Mary to collect her dogs, Ritchie added.

One dog called the “Champion Fircot L’Ballerine” won many top shows in the 1950s, Ritchie said.

When Forsyth and her mother immigrated to Canada in 1968, moving abroad to be closer to her brother and his family, they sailed in on a Russian ship, the Alexander Pushkin, Ritchie said.

Forsyth brought 13 poodles with her on the voyage. Forsyth opened her first dog grooming business a few years later.

She was living with bladder cancer. She was scheduled to begin an experimental treatment at Toronto General Hospital on Thursday, Ritchie said.

“She said if it didn’t help her it may help someone else in the future.”

Munir Najjar, 85, of Jordan

On March 26, Munir Najjar and his wife, Lillian, locked up their house in Amman, Jordan, and gave his neighbours of 18 years the keys. Keep an eye on the house, Najjar told them, while I visit my kids in Canada.

The retired man in his 80s was a friendly face everyone knew in his Amman neighbourhood, his neighbours Jalil Twal and Nuhad Matalka told the Star in a phone call from Jordan. Every day, they’d open their front door and he’d be there, smiling, ready to share a conversation or lend them a hand.

“He’s a very nice man. He helped everybody,” Matalka said. Twal said Najjar was clever and kind.

On Mondaymorning, he was just out for a walk to Starbucks, Twal said. He was an active man in excellent health, Twal added, who liked walking.

“He walked better than me and I’m 73 years old,” Matalka said, laughing.

Najjar was visiting his son Omar, daughter Haneen, and three grandsons in Toronto. They’re a “happy family,” Jalil said.

In the days before Najjar was killed, the couple were enjoying their vacation. They had visited the Aga Khan and had celebrated Easter with ice cream at Unionville. In their Facebook photos, Munir and Lillian Najjar are always side by side, smiling.

In what would become one of the last photos they took together, Lillian has her arm wrapped around her husband as they stand in front of a window overlooking a snow-covered suburb.

Munir Najjar was visiting Toronto from Jordan, on a trip to see his son. On Facebook, a tribute from a man describing himself as a close relative calls Najjar, 82, “a good father to your family and mine.”

“He was a good man,” said a relative, who wished to remain anonymous. “A man of peace, a good heart who lived to see his son and daughter get the best education. He was a positive man.

“He certainly did not need to leave this way, but he will be remembered for his good heart.”

In Jordan, the news of his death came through television. First, his neighbours and relatives heard about the van crash in Toronto. Then, they heard the shocking news their friend had been killed.

“Everyone here is crying,” Matalka said. “It is a tragedy . . . he was a great, great man.”

Relatives told the Star the Najjar family is waiting for the coroner’s office to formally identify him. On Wednesday, the Jordanian Embassy in Ottawa released a statement saying they were working with Canadian authorities to “help and assist the family.”

“We are missing him,” Twal said, lamenting that Najjar would’ve been home in three weeks. “That’s what he told us.”

“I don’t know how to live without my beloved neighbour,” Matalka said. “What else can I say? I just want to cry. He just went to visit his children. He is coming back to Jordan dead.”

Toronto police on Friday also increased the number of injured in the rampage to 16 from 14. Police have so far released the names of 13 injured in the attack. Those people are:

Robert Anderson

Mavis Justino

Amir Kiumarsi

Aleksandra Kozhevinikova

Morgan McDougall

Jun Seok Park

Samantha Peart

So Ra

Catherine Riddell

Sammantha Samson

Beverly Smith

Amaresh Tesfamariam

Yunsheng Tian

The Star is working to confirm the identities of those killed or injured in Monday’s rampage. If you or a loved one were affected, or if you have information on the events, please contact the Star’s news desk at 416-869-4301 or at city@thestar.ca.

If you want to help, or if you need assistance yourself, here’s who you can call.

With files from Evy Kwong, Andrea Gordon and Sara Mojtehedzadeh

Source:thestar.com/news