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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Parents mourn son who 'had a big heart'

By: Alexandra Paul

Posted: 07/26/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

Corey Williams

Ivan and Cecile Williams will bury their only son this week, but the parents from Hollow Water First Nation still don't know how the 25-year-old man met his end.

On Sunday, RCMP discovered the body of Corey Williams at the edge of a farmer's field on Highway 4 near Selkirk.

"We'll let the police handle the investigation," Ivan Williams said in a brief phone interview from the family home on the east side of Lake Winnipeg.

It was seven months since Williams was last seen in Winnipeg on Dec. 22, 2011.

RCMP notified the public Williams was missing three weeks later, on Jan. 12. They are calling the death suspicious.

He never made it home for Christmas, his dad said, and efforts to locate him independent of the police, including using a Facebook page, failed.

It was only by chance Williams turned up at all.

"There was a farmer and he found him beside his field. He was out cutting his hay and he spotted something, so he stopped and he called the police," Ivan Williams said.

An RCMP cruiser was spotted Saturday evening at the site. By Sunday morning, there were several cruisers, a canine unit and a forensic team at the scene. After the remains were removed, a lone cruiser and yellow tape marked the site as an active investigation until late Sunday afternoon.

The field is next to a major provincial highway that is the route of choice for those who drive back and forth from Winnipeg to Pine Falls, Sagkeeng, Little Black River, Manigotagan and Hollow Water every day.

It was also Williams' favourite route to hitch a ride home; traffic is heavy enough he could count on a friend or relative to pick him up, his father said.

"We don't know that he was hitchhiking, but he must have been. He never missed being home for Christmas," his dad said.

Williams was a rambling kind of guy, his dad said, always on the road hitchhiking to visit friends.

"He was like Crocodile Dundee. He'd go on a walkabout and he wouldn't come home for two weeks," his father said.

Williams didn't have a wife and his family didn't volunteer his work history, but his dad said he was outgoing and friendly.

"He was a nice young man, very respectful and polite. He never judged anybody no matter what kind of life they lived. He was a human being... Everyone said he had a big heart and he was always kind," his dad said.

Williams had one sister and a large extended family of aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews. He lived at home with his parents on the Ojibwa First Nation, which sprawls along the boreal shoreline on Lake Winnipeg's south basin.

The family is planning a funeral, likely for Saturday, at Hollow Water First Nation.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 26, 2012 B2

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