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The Barrie Examiner
TAMARA CHERRY, SUN MEDIA
On Sunday, Amber Young was excited about moving into her own place with her baby son. Two days later, the young woman was found in a shallow grave behind a marijuana grow operation.
“They think she was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the Oshawa woman’s sister, Nivek Young, said yesterday after speaking with police. “Monday morning I knew something was wrong. She always called me every day, and she never called me.”
Amber Young, 21, was a family woman. She called her father, Kevin, in Toronto “15 times a day,” her sister-in- law, Shannon Tansley, said from Newfoundland. “She’ll just call him to say, ‘I love you, Daddy,’ and hang up.”
So when no one heard from her after Sunday night, Young’s mother reported her missing.
After turbulent teenaged years, Young was on the right track. She had given birth to a son, Gavin, who had his first birthday five weeks ago today, and was excited about being a stay-at-home mom, 23-year-old Nivek said.
Young had dropped out of high school around Grade 10, but went on to attend Grove School at Durham Family Court Clinic.
She went through a period of depression after having Gavin and was prescribed sleeping pills, on top of her anti-depressants, for sleep apnea. But she never had any addiction problems, her sister said.
“My sister would never do something like this, be in a house like that. She’s not that type of person,” Nivek said, referring to the Oshawa home, which had an indoor grow operation, where her sister was found. “She tried to avoid people like that because of her son.”
“She was very caring and she thought about everybody else, always put her son first,” she said.
A two-and-a-half year relationship with Gavin’s father, Chad Collins, ended recently after Young was charged with assaulting him, Nivek said, adding the charge against her sister was dropped.
A tearful Collins was too distraught to speak yesterday as he watched over their son.
Young lived with her sister for a couple months before finding her own place. She started moving in Saturday. After spending Sunday organizing her things, Young called her sister from her new boyfriend’s home and asked if she could drop some groceries off at her new place for Gavin.
When Nivek visited the apartment with police yesterday, “everything was normal, like the way that I left it on Sunday,” she said. “Nothing was touched, nothing was gone through.”
Young’s last Facebook status update came at 6:47 p. m. Sunday: “Amber Young is ssssoooooo happy that she has her own place,” her sister-in-law said.
“They took our baby, they killed our baby,” Young’s mother, Sheila Tansley, said, bursting into tears at the apartment. “We as a family need closure.”
“The last time anybody spoke to her was Sunday night, around 11 o’clock,” stepfather Bailey Watkins said. “She said she was on her way home, but she never did make it home.”
“She was a lovely girl,” he said. “I can’t believe somebody would even do something like this.”
On Monday, Young’s mom reported her missing. Wednesday night, police showed up at Nivek’s home.
“They told me that they found a body, a female body, at this house and they think it was her,” she recalled. “They just needed the fingerprints.”