Jaimend Orellana-Sincuir: family crowdfunding to bring shooting victim home
CBC News | Posted: February 24, 2015 1:48 PM | Last Updated: February 25, 2015
Jaimend Orellana-Sincuir, who went by Jaime Orellana, was fatally shot Sunday afternoon in Winston Heights
The family of a man killed Sunday in a daytime shooting in northeast Calgary is trying to raise money to bring the body of their loved one home to Ontario.
Jaimend Orellana-Sincuir, or Jaime (Acres) Orellana as he preferred to be known, was the oldest in a family of five children.
His younger sister Mayra says they grew up in a single-parent household in St. Catharines, Ont. and their brother was someone they always looked up to.
"He was a father figure to us and very much the go-to person if you needed some uplifting words or words of wisdom," she said from her home in St. Catharines.
Orellana moved to Calgary less than a year ago to find a good job and pursue a better life.
"He always pushed to get ahead, to not be part of the violence and the gangs and the drugs [in St. Catharines]," Mayra said. "He got to a point where he realized he wasn't flourishing here."
Orellana, 30, found work as a carpenter and moved in to a house in Winston Heights-Mountainview with a friend.
His life was tragically cut short on Sunday. An altercation with a man who frequented the neighbourhood in the 400 block of 26th Avenue N.E. ended with Orellana being fatally shot.
Mayra says her brother was always a peacemaker and based on what she was told about the incident, believes her brother was trying to intervene in a domestic dispute, which led to the shooting.
The family wants Orellana to be remembered as someone who made a positive impact on the lives of the people he met and was the glue in every relationship he was in.
"I think that my goal in all this is just to make sure that we get a true reflection of who my brother was and who he continues to be," she said. "We have had an overwhelming response from people that we don’t even know but my brother just so happened to have made an impact in their lives."
His real passion was music. Orellana spent all of his free time making beats under the stage name "Acres." Mayra says her brother had a network of people locally and in Ontario who would contact him to request beats.
"Every given moment that he could, he was constantly making beats and indulging in music," Mayra said.
The family has set up a gofundme.com page to help bring Orellana back home to St. Catharines.