At midnight on her birthday Natalie Lewandowski stared at her phone, waiting for a call that would never come.Her 25-year-old sister, Alicia Lewandowski, had been killed two days earlier, on March 5, 2018 — one of fourteen women and children killed last year in the Greater Toronto Area in cases considered by police to be domestic homicides. Alicia’s boyfriend Joseph Chang has been charged with first-degree murder.“We were best, best friends. We had a divine and unique bond. Everyone knew us as the ‘Lewandowski sisters,’” said Natalie Lewandowski, 32, on a December evening before her first Christmas since her sister’s death. “We would always say that when mom and dad go, we’d have each other.”Photographs of her sister at various milestones are placed around her apartment. Alicia surrounded by friends on her birthday. Alicia at the surprise baby shower she threw when Lewandowski was pregnant with her son Adrian. Alicia holding Adrian on the night he was born. It’s the photographs of Alicia that will never be added to the framed collages that haunt Lewandowski. Not from her college graduation — Alicia was training to become an esthetician because she loved making people feel beautiful. Not from her wedding or the birth of her first child. When someone is murdered their killer is “not just taking away a person’s life,” she said. “They are affecting everybody that loved the person and even generations later. My son is robbed of having an aunt and first cousins. I am robbed of ever being an aunt.”Read more: The 96 victims of Toronto’s record year in homicideOpinion | Edward Keenan: We owe it to Toronto’s homicide victims to look beyond law enforcementCanada’s firearm homicide rate climbs to highest since 1992There is little Lewandowski wants to say now about her sister’s case because she may be a witness in Chang’s as-yet unscheduled crim ...
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