Saturday, March 28, 2009

28 year old Ismaili Woman passes away in tragic accident

Soraya Nanji, centre, is seen with her roommates, Sharon Duhra, left, and Sherica Sharda. Nanji was killed when she was hit by a truck on Front St.


Former roommate heard bystander scream at moment of tragedy
Mar 27, 2009 04:30 AM
Dale Anne Freed staff reporter

The moment before she died, Soraya Nanji, 28, was laughing on her cellphone with a good friend.
"`Oh my God,' I heard her say," her friend, Tylar Bertie, told the Star.
The phone dropped from Nanji's hand as she walked along Front St. just before 10 o'clock Wednesday night. Trucks honked in the background and cars drove by.
"I heard a (bystander) scream," said Bertie, 28, a former roommate. "I thought maybe she fell, dropped her phone."
And Bertie thought her friend would come back on the phone for sure so she could share another funny story. "She was eager to hear the story. I thought she'd call me back."
But that never happened.
Bertie, who was at her parents' home in Richmond Hill at the time, later saw a news flash on TV about a young woman hit by a truck while talking on the phone. She knew it was her friend.
"I called the police ... they were able to I.D. her based on what I said," Bertie said.
"Soraya was on her phone all the time. I can't imagine something like this happening when you do something as routine as this all the time," she said. "She'd walk and talk all the time. It's just so unbelievable."
Nanji had called Bertie to wish her a good flight before Bertie left yesterday for Florida, where she was flying to help her sister Lakeyshia move back to Toronto.
"She was just an amazing, amazing person who always saw the best in people," said Bertie.
At the time of the accident, they had been talking and laughing for about five or 10 minutes. It was about 9:50 p.m. Nanji had been having dinner with another former roommate in the Entertainment District and was walking to the condo she shared with two roommates several blocks west.
Nanji, an administrative assistant in sales and marketing, had worked at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre since July, said her boss David Chisholm, who said his staff was still reeling from the news.
Born in Uganda, Nanji grew up in Vancouver, where she met her current roommates.
She completed a bachelor of administrative studies at York University in 2007.

With files from Paola Loriggio and Michele Henry