Parents file $12.5M lawsuit alleging police ignored, hid evidence in son’s death
TORONTO — An Ottawa couple who has been fighting for 15 years to have their son’s death reinvestigated has filed a $12.5 million lawsuit against Toronto police, alleging detectives ignored, concealed or eliminated evidence to support a conclusion that the young man committed suicide.
John and Gloria Connelly are also asking the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to declare that police should investigate their son John’s death as a homicide — something the couple argues should have happened right from the start.
“When John was killed, the Toronto Police Service had closed the case before they told us John was dead,” the young man’s father said Wednesday in a phone interview from Ottawa.
The couple’s son was 22 and in his third year as a pharmacy student at the University of Toronto when he died in the early hours of Dec. 9, 2001.