https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygXpKzEv5AY
https://www.yorkregion.com/news-story/1461268-police-push-to-solve-hit-and-run-cold-case/
Somebody knows.
Every time she thinks about it, which is often, Lynn Sprague arrives at the same conclusion: Somebody knows.
The same goes for Bill Blundell, who still hears the sirens ringing through the night, and sees his mother's tears.
And for Mark Walton, the cop who has made it his business to solve a decades-old mystery.
Somebody, they feel, knows who was driving the car that struck Ms. Sprague and her best friend Sheryl Blundell as they stood on Main Street in Stouffville on the night of Feb. 6, 1973. Ms. Sprague, who was 10 at the time, survived. Sheryl was killed.
All these years later York Region police have renewed their investigation of the cold case, and are appealing for information. Constable Walton believes there are people carrying the burden of long-held secrets.
"I do believe there are people out there who know about this," Const. Walton said in a recent interview. "I have no doubt.
"I want to bring some closure to this family."
"We were going to the store," Lynn Sprague said as she recalled the night Sheryl died.
They were two little girls, best friends in Grade 3. Lynn was at Sheryl's house that day. A babysitter was minding Sheryl and her two younger brothers, Bill and Bruce. It was getting dark and the girls begged the sitter to let them run down to the store for candy.
As the girls walked, a woman pulled up and called out to them. She had a carton full of kittens on the seat of her Chevrolet Belair; she was looking for the veterinarian's office. Although the girls could hear her through the passenger window, the woman asked them to come around to the driver's side, Ms. Sprague said. The girls obliged, stepping off the sidewalk into Main Street.
They didn't hear the car coming. Ms. Sprague just remembers waking up as she lay on the street. Her shoes were missing. The dazed child began to look about in the winter gloom for her shoes. There lay Sheryl.
"I looked down," said Ms. Sprague.
She stopped to stifle a sob.
"Sheryl was bleeding from the nose and mouth."
People began to gather. A doctor arrived on scene. Sirens wailed in the distance. A bewildered Lynn Sprague ran home, wanting to see her mother.
As the girls walked, a woman pulled up and called out to them. She had a carton full of kittens on the seat of her Chevrolet Belair; she was looking for the veterinarian's office. Although the girls could hear her through the passenger window, the woman asked them to come around to the driver's side, Ms. Sprague said. The girls obliged, stepping off the sidewalk into Main Street.
They didn't hear the car coming. Ms. Sprague just remembers waking up as she lay on the street. Her shoes were missing. The dazed child began to look about in the winter gloom for her shoes. There lay Sheryl.
"I looked down," said Ms. Sprague.
She stopped to stifle a sob.
"Sheryl was bleeding from the nose and mouth."
People began to gather. A doctor arrived on scene. Sirens wailed in the distance. A bewildered Lynn Sprague ran home, wanting to see her mother.
Ms. Sprague was unhurt and spent the night at home under the watchful eyes of her parents. She remembers that sometime during the night -- the exact time is lost to her -- her dad told her Sheryl was dead.
Sitting in her Oshawa home 39 years later, Ms. Sprague was still amazed at how quickly it happened.
"We didn't see (the car) coming," she said. "We didn't have a clue."
The driver who struck the two little girls didn't stop. Police launched an investigation, interviewing witnesses and conducting a canvass of cars in the community, looking for vehicles that had sustained damage. Despite intense interest in the case, the trail ran cold.
Lynn Sprague was largely unaware of the ensuing mystery. She heard grownups talking about it from time to time, but for the most part resumed her childhood, trying to put the trauma of the incident behind her.
But in the Blundell household, it never went away. Bill Blundell, who was seven when his sister was killed, remembers a family wracked by grief and anger. He particularly remembers his mother's devastation.
"It was all she could do to get through the day," said Mr. Blundell, who now lives in Uxbridge.
He said his mother died in September of 2009, still grieving.
"When you take a child away from a mother it can never be replaced," he said. "She never got over it."
Mr. Blundell remembers being confused by the suddenness and finality of a death so close.
"I remember for a couple of years I would go to bed at night, hoping (Sheryl) would be there in the morning," he said. "Many nights I'd wonder why this had happened to her."
Deepening the family's turmoil was the knowledge that the driver who had struck Sheryl hadn't stopped, and was likely living among them in the small community of Stouffville.
"I am very confident it's a local person," Mr. Blundell said. "I'm also sure there are people who know who did this. That knowledge must be a burden that endures all this time later, he said.
"It's hard to imagine living your life, knowing what happened that night and not being able to say, 'Yes, I was the one'."
Const. Walton acknowledges that to a degree, he's hoping someone's conscience will prompt them to come forward with information that will finally reveal who was at the wheel of the car that struck Sheryl and Lynn. But he's also armed with new evidence.
When the case was re-opened, Sheryl's clothing was sent to the Centre of Forensic Sciences. Paint particles discovered on the clothing have led Const. Walton to conclude the car was most likely a red Ford or Mercury automobile manufactured in the 1960s. It's not exactly a smoking gun, but it's a lead, he said.
Const. Walton has been re-visiting people who have given statements to police in the past and is casting a wider net, hoping to hear from people who never came forward. He's even been distributing posters in communities in north Durham in hopes of reviving decades-old memories.
The passage of time, the officer said, does not lessen the gravity of the offence, or the pain it caused Sheryl's family.
"Even though it was long ago, we still want to hold the driver responsible," he said.
That person may be alive; maybe not. It's the truth that matters.
"It's important for the family that's had to live with this for 39 years," Const. Walton said.
Ms. Sprague also is tormented by the enduring mystery.
"It's always weighed on my mind," she said. "It really haunts me."
She feels the driver -- she refers to the person as "him" -- is still alive and carrying the secret.
"I hopes it's haunting him, too," Ms. Sprague said. "I really do."
