Features » canada.com

LOCAL NEWS

Missing man identified from body found in river

Lori Coolican

The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)

Saturday, August 31, 2002

A family in Ladner, B.C. got news they were dreading from Saskatoon police Thursday night, after a body found in the South Saskatchewan River was identified as 19-year-old Derek Dyson.

"He was quite a ladies' man," Dyson's sister Stephanie wrote in an e-mail to the StarPhoenix Friday.

"My mom and I will always remember him for being such a kamikaze kid . . . that was what my mom referred to him as . . . he was always getting into stuff and going that extra mile towards 'extreme.' "

Dyson's mother, Patti, issued a plea for public assistance in locating him on Wednesday, after he'd uncharacteristically failed to show up for work and failed to call her on her birthday as he'd promised.

On Friday, she wanted to publicly thank the people who assisted in the search, especially those her daughter met on the Internet.

Dyson moved to Saskatoon this summer to work as an independent distributor supplied by Solarcom, a local promotions company.

"He would go out every day and talk with people, get them smiling and get them laughing, and inviting him out to restaurants and things like this," Solarcom manager Mike Laforge said.

He and other Solarcom staff had designed a missing person's poster and Laforge was just starting to distribute it around town when they got the bad news Thursday.

"He had a lot of energy, he liked what he was doing," Laforge said. "He basically talked to people all day, keeping them smiling, keeping them laughing. He made friends really, really fast."

Patti Dyson said her son was happy with his job and had set goals to advance within the company where he was employed. He was also happy in his personal life, she added.

Stephanie Dyson recalled her brother's love of sports.

"He was big time into snowboarding and hanging with friends," she wrote. "He also spent many hours at the baseball parks every summer to ump the girls' baseball tourneys."

Dyson went out to a club with a friend on Saturday night and was last seen in City Park at about 1:30 a.m. Sunday. He declined an invitation to stay at his friend's house, saying he didn't want to wake everyone up and would just walk home, Laforge said. He lived on the other side of the river, near Circle Park Mall, but was used to walking long distances.

Officers from the Saskatoon police major crimes unit are investigating. An autopsy was performed Friday morning, but a cause of death had not been determined and police were releasing few details.

They are not prepared to say they suspect foul play right now because "they just don't know," Staff Sgt. Al Sather said.

© Copyright 2002 The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon)