Elderly couple found dead in apparent double suicide
Posted October 29, 2013 3:18 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
An elderly couple is dead after an apparent double suicide at an Etobicoke apartment complex.
The couple, who friends described as “deeply in love” and “best friends,” reportedly jumped together from the balcony of their penthouse unit Tuesday morning, plunging 18 storeys to their deaths.
Vladimir and Marika, aged 89 and 84 respectively, had lived at the apartment on Widdicombe Hill Boulevard, near Kipling and Eglinton avenues for years.
Friends tell CityNews they met later in life after their spouses from previous marriages passed away.
Both have adult children and grandchildren from their previous marriages.
Police say a note was found in the their apartment, but wouldn’t confirm its contents. But friends say both were in poor health, and Marika suffered from chronic pain.
They had also become depressed.
“I could see how unhappy they were, they were doing a lot of sleeping. Very depressed…I know they couldn’t live without each other,” one friend said.
“Everybody is crying this morning,” added another, Joann Hanson. “That’s the last thing you would ever expect these people to do. So it had to be bad.”
Their deaths have re-sparked debate about assisted suicide, and come about a month after Dr. Donald Low, who led Toronto through the SARS crisis in 2003, made a video pleading for the right to die with dignity in a posthumous video.
“Why make people suffer for no reason?” Low asked, about a week before his death from cancer at 68.
