Keirsten Sagutch says she hopes the body found over the weekend isn’t her missing 42-year-old mother.
City police are attempting to identify human remains discovered between the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre and an adjacent cemetery. On Monday, officials with the Thunder Bay Police Service said a man stumbled upon the body just before 3 p.m. on Saturday in a wooded area.
A post-mortem has been scheduled.
Sagutch’s mother, Pauline Jean Kireto, was last seen in that area in on Oct. 15, 2012. Nearly a month later 20 police officers started looking for Kireto near the regional but came up empty.
She said she was shocked when she heard the news that a body was found.
“I don’t want to jump to conclusions and think that it is her,” she said. “I’m hoping this body they found isn’t her. This may sound bad but I may be happy in a way if it wasn’t her. Her being alive is the only thought that keeps me going.”
Sagutch described her mother has someone she often visited and enjoyed spending time with. When Kireto had her good days and wasn’t suffering from her illness, she loved spending time with her granddaughter.
Having not spoken or see Kireto for so long, Sagutch said she misses her mother.
“It’s just hard waiting and waiting for information to come up,” she said. “Every time I go out I hope I will see her.”
But the likelihood that it is her mother is also weighing on Sagutch’s mind.
She said she doesn’t know how she will react if the body turns out to be her mother.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she added. “I don’t even want to think about that. I’m just hoping that it is not her but I’m scared that it’s going to be.”
Kireto is described as five-feet-one-inch tall with a medium build.
She has short dark brown hair and a tattoo of cards with a rose on her right arm and a tattoo of scissors with a rose and a name tag on her left arm.
