Memorial taken down, found for woman killed by drunk driver

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This article was published 26/02/2025 (194 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The family of a young woman killed by a drunk driver in 2022 were heartbroken after a longstanding memorial at the crash site was taken down by a nearby homeowner earlier this week.

Jordyn Reimer was killed at the intersection of Kildare Avenue West and Bond Street while acting as a designated driver for her friends.

Her father, Doug Reimer, noticed the Transcona memorial — a wooden cross bearing Jordyn’s name, photos, hockey sticks, flowers and other items — had been removed when he visited Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the family learned the memorial had been removed by a resident who lives near the site of the crash.

“In our mind it was only one of (several) possibilities,” Jordyn’s mother, Karen Reimer, said late Wednesday afternoon. “I’m pretty speechless. A flood of emotions.”

Their 24-year-old daughter, who played college hockey in Edmonton, was living and working in Brandon and made regular weekend trips home to Winnipeg to visit family and friends.

Almost immediately after the May 2022 crash, items — including stuffed animals and hockey sticks from her former teammates — began accumulating at the site.

Family members regularly visited to move breakable items and things that could interfere with traffic or pedestrians.

The resident who removed the items planned to put the items back Wednesday evening, Reimer said.

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Reimer doesn’t know why the neighbour took down the memorial out of the blue.

“Some people think the memorial could be upsetting for some people to look at, but how upsetting do you think it is that we don’t have a place to grieve our daughter?” Reimer said.

City policy requires roadside memorials not create a hazard or obstruct vehicles or pedestrians and must be removed within 365 days of the date of the fatal collision. City enforcement of memorial bylaws is typically complaint-based.

Tyler Scott Goodman was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2023 after pleading guilty to impaired driving causing death and failing to stop at the scene. He was behind the wheel of a pickup truck that blew through a four-way stop at the intersection and slammed into the car Reimer was driving. Investigators determined he was travelling at 108 km/h. The speed limit was 50 km/h.

nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca

Nicole Buffie
Multimedia producer

Nicole Buffie is a reporter for the Free Press city desk. Born and bred in Winnipeg, Nicole graduated from Red River College’s Creative Communications program in 2020 and worked as a reporter throughout Manitoba before joining the Free Press newsroom as a multimedia producer in 2023. Read more about Nicole.

Every piece of reporting Nicole 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.