THUNDER BAY – Thunder Bay Police have tentatively identified a body pulled Saturday from the water at the Kaministiquia River Heritage Park as that of missing 33-year-old man Thomas Kwasny.
However, police are not yet able to provide a cause of death or indicate if foul play was involved because a post-mortem examination in Toronto has not been completed.
Det.-Insp. John Fennell on Tuesday said they can’t absolutely confirm the body is Kwasny, but family members, bearing the same information as police, have publicly identified their relative.
“There’s been some difficulty trying to get to Toronto with all the COVID,” Fennell said, explaining the examination delay, adding officers arrived in the Ontario capital about an hour earlier and the results are expected on Wednesday.
“We’re still actively investigating. The officers are still in the area. The area is still (sealed) off, pending the post-mortem. We like to do that to make sure if there is anything the post-mortem identifies or concern or anything that we need to review, then we still have the scene protected.”
Kwasny was last seen on May 15 and a missing persons report was submitted to police on May 28. Police have put out a call to the public in an effort to determine where he was and what he was doing in the time leading up to when he entered the water.
Fennell said even if a potential witness was in the area of the park and saw nothing it could be helpful. It was a passerby who spotted the body floating in the river.
“What we’re trying to determine is exactly the location of Mr. Kwasny that day, where he went, particularly at the Kamview lookout at that point. If there’s anybody that was there on May 15 after 2 o’clock in the afternoon, we would really appreciate them coming forward,” Fennell said.
“Particularly, even if they think they didn’t see anything, that would actually be able to help us as well, to know there was nobody in the area at that time.”
Police are treating the death as suspicious until the results of the post-mortem are confirmed, but Fennell said that’s standard operating procedure in most investigations of this nature.
