Break-in becomes memorial for hit-and-run victim

Sarah Odd assumed the worst when her landlord called and said there had been a break and enter at her house while she was away for Christmas. But nothing was damaged except the window the suspect entered through. Nothing was taken, and nothing had been moved save for one thing: a photo of Odd's friend Kiera-Leigh Carlson, who was killed in a hit-and-run in 2010.

"I was clearing up some glass on the kitchen table when I saw my Kiera pin sitting on the window ledge," Odd says. "I reached for it, and realized it was on the outside."

Odd knew she had left the pin on the table, amongst a jumble of other things. She asked her landlord, and the friend who had been house-sitting if either of them had moved it. Neither had.

"Automatically, I thought all these crazy things," Odd says of the mysterious event.

She says the cops came to their Rutland home, but couldn't do much because there wasn't any damage or anything stolen. The only other indication there had been an intruder was a set of footprints tracked across the floor. The broken window got boarded up, and no one noticed the pin balancing on the window ledge until Odd did.

Odd recalls asking her fiancé to come have a look at the unexplainable location of the pin.

"He said it was random. He didn't believe me," she says.

Odd admits she'll never know for sure how the pin got there, but believes it was meant to be.

"I've always been a big believer that those close to me who have passed are watching over me," Odd says.

Odd considered the possibility the culprit knew Carlson, and had a twang of guilt when he, or she, realized they were about to rob her friend's house.

"I don't want to believe that though, because I don't want to think her friends are those types of people."

Aside from the placement of the photograph, Odd describes another unusual coincidence.

"When I was on vacation in Ottawa, I was talking to my mother-in-law about this sort of thing," Odd says. "People who have passed on being around and watching over us."

"Then I come home and find this," she says.

Odd wasn't one of Carlson's closest friends, but says she thinks of her often.

"Whenever I'm driving, she's on my mind."

Odd will be leaving the pin where it is, guarding her home from the window ledge.

"I could come up with a million reasons to why (the culprit) may have taken that one thing off my table and placed it there, but I believe we had a friend helping us that night," Odd says.

—Charlotte Helston
chelston@infotelnews.ca
(250)-309-5230