Jeffrey Johnston’s always-on phone was off for a third straight day when Susan Forsyth made the early-morning drive to her son’s house in Oshawa, worry mounting with every unanswered call.When she arrived on the frigid morning of Dec. 15 from her home in Newcastle, Forsyth quickly realized something was wrong: an eviction notice was plastered on the door of the pale yellow home where Johnston rented a room. She immediately contacted Durham Regional Police to report her 31-year-old son, her only child, missing. But Forsyth alleges that instead of launching an investigation, police did little to initiate a search, one she assumed would begin inside the home where her son had been living.For more than 48 hours, she alleges she unsuccessfully pleaded with officers to check inside the home, but was met with claims that they could not go in — even after the next-door neighbour reported to police that he’d noticed blood inside Johnston’s room one day before he was reported missing.Terrified and frustrated, Forsyth and Johnston’s father ultimately decided to break into the home themselves, through an open window. There, they found dark brown stains on the stairs and pink marks on Johnston’s mattress — what they feared, and now know, was blood.Forsyth is thankful that’s all they saw. On Sunday, Dec. 17 — two days after Johnston was reported missing to police — officers went inside the house and found his body. An autopsy determined he’d been fatally stabbed, making Johnston Durham Region’s ninth homicide of 2017.According to court documents, Johnston was killed on Dec. 13 — meaning he had been dead for four days before he was found. Paul Jaglal, Johnston’s roommate at the house, is charged with first-degree murder in Johnston’s death. “I am so angry that I have had to live through this nightmare and that a lot of it could have been prevented,” Forsyth writes in a d ...
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