The fire roared amid the long shadows beneath the Mt. Pleasant Rd. bridge.A jogger changed his path and ran toward the blaze. A woman driving on Rosedale Valley Rd. pulled over; her female passenger jumped out and sprinted towards an engulfed green tent.In the heart of one of Canada’s wealthiest neighbourhoods, around dinner-time on the last Friday in April, Darren McKim — a well-loved father, son, brother, cousin, friend — was burning inside.The jogger pulled McKim from the tent. The frantic rescuers, soon joined by an off-duty paramedic, saw horrific damage. McKim’s trousers had been seared off. He was charred from the waist down. His upper body had no apparent burns but there was a fresh-looking gash on his forehead; blood covered his hands, face and pooled in his mouth.The woman from the car, Anna Cooper, tried to comfort him, gently stroking his arm as sirens grew louder. McKim looked at her and whispered: “Can I go home now?”Four days later, on May 1, McKim, 50, died at Sunnybrook Hospital. Alone.The coroner on duty that day called the death “suspicious.” Hospital staff referenced an assault in several entries in McKim’s medical records. The police taped off the area as a crime scene and treated McKim as a victim of aggravated assault — a witness told police he had heard a woman shouting at McKim in his tent shortly before the fire.Police would later change their minds. They ruled his death an accident and closed the case, saying there was no evidence to support another conclusion.To support more of the Star’s investigative journalism subscribe now.The decision devastated McKim’s family who say his name should be on Toronto’s homicide list. His family believes he was attacked, then set ablaze after an altercation with a woman with whom he shared the tent — a woman police never located.Dr. Kumar Gupta, the coroner, hasn’t released his final report but McKim’s 80- ...
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