Today's Gazette has a story of a Verdun teenager whose body was pulled from the river November 15th, Here's an example of his 'work' ......
MONTREAL – Brian Kachur had a pleasant family dinner at his mother's house in Verdun on Nov. 14 and then headed out to do something he loved.
"I am going out bombing," the aspiring graffiti artist told his family after they had eaten his uncle's seafood pizza.
Kachur, who left his graffiti tag, Razor, across southwestern Montreal, told his mother he loved her and headed off into the night.
When her 19-year-old son failed to return home by the next evening, his mother, Theresa, and his sister, Laurie Ann, began to wonder where he was.
Theresa, who didn't want her family name published, always asked her son to call if he wasn't coming home.
But this time, he didn't - and he wasn't answering his cellphone.
On the Monday, Theresa picked up a newspaper while riding the métro to work and shuddered when she saw the headline: "Body pulled from St. Lawrence River."
At lunch hour, she showed the newspaper to a friend at work. "I hope this is not my son," she said.
Later that day, two Montreal police detectives turned up at Laurie Ann Kachur's home in Ville Émard and told her that the body pulled from the river near the Verdun marina was her brother's.
Police don't know who killed Kachur or why he was singled out. He had no criminal record and was not involved in a gang.
A few hundred metres from where a pedestrian spotted his body in the water, blood was found beside a shed-size building that Kachur had started tagging, but had not finished.
Although his family doesn't know for sure that the blood is Kachur's, they wonder whether he was attacked there before his body was dumped in the river. They are asking the public to call the police if they know anything about the killing or saw him that evening near the river.
Theresa said she can't fathom why anyone would want to harm her son, whom she described as charming and sweet. She does wonder, however, whether her son's use of marijuana eventually led him to hang out with the wrong crowd.
"I have been worried about Brian all of his life," she said.
As a young boy, he was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. He fell behind in school and dropped out in his early teens, around the same time he began using marijuana regularly.
Theresa said she tried to get help for her son. He was prescribed Ritalin and had several sessions with psychiatrists, but nothing seemed to work.
He eventually stopped taking his medication and refused to go into a drug rehabilitation program.
"He was struggling to find his way in life," his mother said. "The drug eased some of the pain. He felt he wasn't good at anything."
When he wasn't tagging, Kachur spent time sketching, hanging out with his dad, Walter Kachur, and writing rap songs about his life. He dreamed about recording his work, but he lacked the money and contacts to do so.
This year, he enrolled in an Emploi-Québec program that helps young people enter the job market, which he liked. But mostly he enjoyed hanging out with family and friends and smoking dope.
At the funeral home, several of his buddies tossed a few joints into his coffin.
"Brian wasn't ashamed of smoking," his sister said. "It helped him relax."
Anyone with information about Brian Kachur's death can call Info-Crime at 514-393-1133.
kwilton@thegazette.canwest.com
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