Police have update on human remains found on golf course
Posted March 9, 2012 10:39 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Police will provide an update Friday on a discovery of human remains that prompted a call to the mother of a missing Toronto girl.
A body was found Feb. 28 in a wooded area in the city’s north end, near Yonge Street and Highway 401.
Toronto police say they contacted the mother of Mariam Makhniashvili that week as a courtesy, as they have done on other occasions when a body was found.
A forensics team has been attempting to identify the remains, and police have scheduled a 1 p.m. news conference.
Mariam was 17 when she disappeared after arriving at Forest Hill Collegiate Institute on Sept. 14, 2009.
The only solid clue was the discovery of her backpack and some school books in a parking lot the following month.
The Makhniashvili family, originally from the Republic of Georgia, had only been in Toronto for three months when their daughter disappeared.
The parents lived in Los Angeles for five years before moving to Toronto, while Mariam and her brother lived with their grandparents in Georgia.
Her father, Vakhtang Makhniashvili, pleaded guilty last year to three counts of aggravated assault and was sentenced to six years in prison.
The charges followed two separate stabbing incidents, one involving a neighbour and the other a couple who had posted his bail.
