Skip to main content

'Keep the car': Woman hopes thieves return mother's ashes from back seat of stolen vehicle

Catherine Lewis says her car, left, was stolen Wednesday morning from a West Island hotel early Wednesday morning. She says she doesn't care if the thieves keep the vehicle, but she's pleading with them to return her mother's ashes, right, which were in the back seat. (Photos courtesy of Catherine Lewis) Catherine Lewis says her car, left, was stolen Wednesday morning from a West Island hotel early Wednesday morning. She says she doesn't care if the thieves keep the vehicle, but she's pleading with them to return her mother's ashes, right, which were in the back seat. (Photos courtesy of Catherine Lewis)
Share

A woman is calling on Montrealers to keep their eyes peeled for her stolen vehicle. She says she does not care about the car; it’s her mother’s ashes, which were sitting in the back seat, that she wants back.

Catherine Lewis, a Montreal-born Torontonian, says she and her sister drove to Montreal to bury her mother’s ashes next to their father at the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery on Mount Royal.

On Tuesday night, they parked in front of a West Island hotel and left the urn in the backseat.

“Laughingly, we said we’d leave the ashes in the car ... because it’s not going to make a difference,” she said.

“But when we came out to the car the next morning, to go to the cemetery, the car was gone,” she added. “It’s just unbelievable.”

She says police told her the car was stolen at around 3:40 a.m., and that it was likely parked on the side of the road somewhere.

Now, she’s pleading with anyone with information on its location to come forward before the vehicle is sold or shipped off.

“Hopefully [the thieves] will have a modicum of morality,” she said. “They wouldn’t have known that the ashes were back there.”

“Keep the car, you can have the car, we would just really appreciate having the ashes returned.”

WHAT TO LOOK FOR

The vehicle is a silver 2020 Toyota RAV4 with Ontario licence plate CDNP 041.

The ashes are in a golden, rectangular urn, inscribed with “Winifred Jane Dominik, 1928 – 2021.” It’s sitting inside a burgundy felt bag, along with the certificate of cremation and a death certificate.

Anyone who has the ashes in their possession can return them to the hotel where the vehicle was stolen from, or a local police station.

Lewis says police told her the RAV4 is a particularly popular car to steal.

“An investigation is underway in this case,” a police spokesperson told CTV Montreal. “It goes without saying that we encourage anyone who notices that their vehicle has been stolen to report it to the police.”

Police also said there have been significantly more vehicle thefts in Montreal this year.

In 2021, police recorded 3,820 thefts between Jan 1 to Aug.31. During that same period in 2022, there had been 6,190.

CTVNews.ca Top Stories

Stay Connected