An annual memorial in Windsor for women who died in an act of violence has remembered a Windsor murder victim.
Family and friends of 31-year-old Autumn Taggart attended the ceremony by Unifor Local 444 outside of the FCA Windsor Assembly Plant, as it marked the 29th anniversary of the L'Ecole Polytechnique massacre in Montreal where 14 women were killed.
Taggart was sexually assaulted and killed in her own apartment on University Ave. back on June 10, 2018.
On Thursday, family including Taggart's young son, tied a white ribbon around a tree with Taggart's name on it.
A white ribbon is tied around a tree outside of the Windsor Assembly Plant to remember Autumn Taggart. December 6, 2018 (Photo by AM800's Teresinha Medeiros)
"It is hard, it is like having a nightmare that you wake up from every single day, " says Amber Gelinas who was Taggart's best friend and cousin. "Being here helps a little because it brings awareness to what happened. It is so easy for people to forget."
Taggart's family and friends wore purple baseball caps with #JusticeForAutumn on it calling for the most severe sentence for the man accused in Taggart's death.
Gelinas says the loss is not getting any easier.
"There is so much pain, there is so much pain involving it all, there is questions that were never answered, " she says. "Our family is never going to have closure because we will also be missing a part of our family, we will always be missing her."
She says she still looks at Taggart's picture and sends her messages on Instagram knowing that she will never receive a response.
The memorial called for an end to violence against women.
"How can any woman feel safe if it is that easy for something like this to happen," asks Gelinas.
Police arrested 27-year-old Jitesh Bhogal and charged him with first-degree-murder.
Bhogal and Taggart did not know each other.