https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/20...an-fall-from-the-31st-floor-no-one-knows.html
Bella Laboucan-McLean
a recent graduate of Humber College’s fashion arts program
Bella Laboucan-McLean
It’s been three years since her sister’s death, but Melina Laboucan-Massimo is still searching for answers.
She remembers an almost unbearable grief in the first year after her sister, Bella Nancy Marie Laboucan-McLean, fell to her death from a downtown Toronto condo unit on July 20, 2013; the numbness in the second year; and now, after the third, a sadness that can be kept at bay but occasionally rears its ugly head.
But through it all, Laboucan-Massimo has wanted to know the answer to one question — how did Bella, her bright, beautiful 25-year-old sister, a recent graduate of Humber College’s fashion arts program, plummet from that 31st-floor balcony to her death?
Three years later, she still doesn’t know.
“There’s no closure,” Laboucan-Massimo said on the phone from Lubicon Lake Cree traditional territory in northern Alberta, on the eve of the anniversary of Bella’s death. She had just stepped away from activities on the last day of a four-day annual memorial held for Bella on the land of her father’s community, 4,000 km from Toronto.
Bella’s family — her mother, father, two sisters and a little brother — have always rejected the idea that she intentionally jumped off the balcony. She was in the prime of her life, never had mental health issues and never spoke about harming herself, Laboucan-Massimo said.
Even to Toronto police investigators, the circumstances don’t really make sense.
According to police, Bella was in a unit at 21 Iceboat Terr., one in the cluster of glassy condos in CityPlace, with five others that Saturday morning.
Around 4:55 a.m., someone from a neighbouring building called police to report an “unknown disturbance”; when officers arrived, they found a woman sprawled on the ground next to 21 Iceboat. She had no identification on her, so police began a canvass of the condo, going door-to-door in hopes of finding someone who knew who she was.
Meanwhile, none of the people who were in the condo with Bella seemed to have noticed anything was amiss. It wasn’t until 5 p.m. that day, 12 hours later, that someone phoned police to report her missing.
Later on, when questioned by police, all would deny having seen or heard anything unusual; no one saw Bella go over the balcony railing, no one even seemed to have noticed that she was gone. Her phone, purse and shoes were still inside the condo
a recent graduate of Humber College’s fashion arts program