Black fabric tied to the windowsills of Evelyn Alfaro Mendez’s family home offers only a hint of the sadness inside.
In the family room of this modest Malton dwelling, Odalys Alfaro, the 12-year-old daughter of Toronto’s second homicide victim this year, buries her head in her grandmother’s shoulder.
Her dimpled smile disappears as she struggles to grasp her mother’s sudden, tragic death.
“I love you,” Odalys said, as if sending a message to her 34-year-old mom. “I miss you. And I wish you’d never gone.”
The last time Odalys, the second of three children, saw her mom was Sunday afternoon before bedtime.
She was sleeping when Alfaro Mendez, a regular on Toronto’s nightclub circuit, and three cousins headed downtown.
On Sunday evening, Alfaro Mendez visited her boyfriend of four or five months, who lives in the Don Mills area, after dropping off her passengers in Toronto, relatives said yesterday. She was supposed to meet friends at a nightclub near Wilson Avenue. and Jane Street, but never arrived.
Police found her body just before midnight — apparently after a resident reported the idling vehicle. Other residents said they heard multiple gunshots around 9:30 p.m. and some had noticed another vehicle pull up, at some point, beside the silver SUV.
Police detectives — who still do not have a suspect, a murder weapon or a motive in the slaying — are scouring her personal life for leads. Alfaro Mendez did not have a criminal record.
