No end to family’s pain

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/05/2023 (859 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Reimers don’t use the words anniversary or accident.

Accident implies no fault, they say, and anniversary is used to denote happy moments, not the day their misery and grief began.

Karen and Doug Reimer have had 365 of those days since the date of their daughter’s untimely death, when she was acting as a designated driver during a weekend trip to see family and friends in Winnipeg from her new home in Brandon.

A truck hit Jordyn Reimer’s vehicle in a residential area at Kildare Avenue West and Bond Street at about 2:20 a.m. May 1, 2022, not far from where she grew up. She died soon after.

Winnipeg police said the driver and occupants of the other vehicle fled the scene. The alleged driver and later, his mother, were arrested and charged, but the case has not yet gone to trial.

Jordyn was 24 — a sister to three sisters, an accomplished hockey player and a recent graduate of Edmonton’s MacEwan University, who had just begun her life. She was working for Manitoba Public Insurance in Brandon and made regular trips to Winnipeg on weekends to visit family.

In the year that has passed, as their grief compounds and changes, Karen and Doug and their wider community have worked to ensure Jordyn is not forgotten.

That grief was on display in Doug’s Hoka Street home during a recent emotional interview with the Free Press, where next to the front entrance, he has his memories of her on a shelf — his shrine. Photographs from her childhood and hockey career, her diploma, her university rings and her childhood stuffed-toy leopard.

It’s displayed around the dining room table, where they have put on display the photographs of their daughter they had blown up on poster boards for her memorial, while they speak with a reporter and photographer, between tears.

Their grief is displayed in the ways they’ve tried to make sure she’s remembered for who she was, like when her university hockey team hung a banner with her number during their home-opener last fall, or the way they’ve advocated for the city to add a stop sign to the intersection where she was killed.

Her high school, Transcona Collegiate, hung a framed photo of her hockey jersey, along with photographs of her, near the gymnasium.

And others have helped too, such as the team Jordyn played recreational hockey with in Brandon that organized a tournament held in her honour in February. The teams raised money for Doug and Karen, who plan to develop a scholarship for women’s hockey, or perhaps donate money to help girls attend hockey camps.

A local company, Labels Unlimited, made stickers in her honour free of charge, and the parents bought an engraved paving stone now in place in Transcona Square on Regent Avenue.

Next Saturday, the parents and Jordyn’s loved ones will unveil a memorial bench, etched in her honour, on a section of the Transcona Trail down the block from Doug’s home.

‘A lot of the stuff we do, we do to honour Jordyn… and we want that message out there, the type of person she was, the type we raised her to be, that message for other people to understand, like I say, we don’t like the word accident, we’d like people to know that this kind of stuff doesn’t need to happen’– Doug Reimer, father of Jordyn Reimer

“A lot of the stuff we do, we do to honour Jordyn — and we want that message out there, the type of person she was, the type we raised her to be, that message for other people to understand, like I say, we don’t like the word accident, we’d like people to know that this kind of stuff doesn’t need to happen,” said Doug.

“Until people wake up. We can’t always fall back and blame the lawmakers and the lawyers, this kind of stuff starts in the home, it really starts in the home. Teach your kids to be smart, responsible and do the right things.”

In the future, they said, they may advocate along with other families of victims of drunk driving, to help change laws and raise outcry over the needless deaths.

Tyler Scott Goodman, now 29, was charged shortly after with dangerous driving causing death, driving causing death while impaired and failing to remain at the scene.

His mother, Laurie Lynn Goodman, 57, was charged with obstructing justice and two counts of accessory after the fact in early August, for allegedly misleading investigators.

None of the charges have been proven in court.

Karen and Doug have been frustrated by the legal process, now reaching into a year, with a five-day trial set for July 17-21.

“It doesn’t matter what sentence they give him, if he gets sentenced… we know historically that it’s a joke. Even if he got some huge sentence, in my mind there’s no such thing as justice for us, even though we say justice for Jordyn, really we’re looking for some level of accountability,” said Karen.

“We’ll have a life sentence forever, without her…. Every single day, our girls cry, and they’re dreading getting engaged, dreading getting married, dreading having kids, and somehow, how they have joy, when they don’t have Jordyn to share that with.”

Karen said they’ve felt left out of the process, told to just trust Crown prosecutors, without being able to influence the outcome of the case. Then there’s delay, after delay, after delay.

A preliminary court date was last Wednesday — when Reimer’s family and friends packed the court while wearing shirts in her memory — while another preliminary date is set for mid-May.

The family, and their loved ones, plan to sit in court each day, with their shirts emblazoned with Jordyn’s face. Karen notes they had planned to make only 50 shirts at first with the help of the local Special T-Shirt Company. They’ve had requests for nearly 600.

“Hopefully, friends and family will come out and show their support, because that’s the only influence, if you want to call it that, that’s the only influence we’ll have,” said Doug.

“Public outrage has to be there for the courts to change, or consider, and this is one where we’re going to try to show them that the public is outraged.”

erik.pindera@winnipegfreepress.com

Erik Pindera
Reporter

Erik Pindera is a reporter for the Free Press, mostly focusing on crime and justice. The born-and-bred Winnipegger attended Red River College Polytechnic, wrote for the community newspaper in Kenora, Ont. and reported on television and radio in Winnipeg before joining the Free Press in 2020.  Read more about Erik.

Every piece of reporting Erik produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.