The husband of a 56-year-old Toronto woman has been charged with second-degree murder after, her daughter says, he called their children and told them she had died in her sleep.

Dan Reil, 56, was charged the day after his three children arrived at their parents’ home and called emergency services about their mother, Kathy Plytas.

“We were told she passed in her sleep and we started to figure otherwise when we seen our mom,” said Krystal Reil, 31, who did not want to go into detail.

“We’re all just devastated.”

Reil, who was married to Plytas for 38 years, was initially taken to a hospital for a psychiatric assessment, his daughter said. He appeared in a College Park courtroom Thursday.

Plytas, Toronto’s 41st homicide this year, suffered from Graves’ disease, an immune disorder that made her frail, Krystal said, adding that her mother was dependent on a scooter.

It was her mother’s illness that was on Krystal’s mind Tuesday afternoon when she got a phone call from her father. She and her other siblings, who her father also telephoned with the news of Plytas’s death, gathered at the house near Danforth and Jones Aves., Krystal said.

That’s when they saw the state of their mother’s body and, Krystal said, they knew something wasn’t right.

They left the house, Krystal said, and went outside where they telephoned emergency services.

Police responded to a call about sudden death, a news release said, and officers arrived on the scene at 2:16 p.m., where Plytas was pronounced dead.

After an autopsy on Plytas’s body, Krystal said, police arrested Reil on Wednesday and charged him.

The family is still digesting the tragedy and taking it “minute by minute,” Krystal said, calling her mother “beautiful” but noting that her life was “horrible” and “tragic.”

She said her mother was “loving, caring, kind and funny” and lived for her children, especially her three young grandchildren, who she saw “every chance she could get,” Krystal said.

After Plytas’s illness forced her to stop working as a waste-management emergency dispatcher for the City of Toronto about five years ago, Krystal said, she spent her days seeing her two daughters and son, going out for coffee with friends and roaming the neighbourhood on her scooter and with her dog Pooks, a German shepherd-husky mix.

Plytas’s brother James Plytas, 58, said he learned about his sister’s death over the phone on Tuesday and was “stunned” by the news. Although he hasn’t been close with his sister in years, he said he recalled her wedding at a Greek Orthodox church.

Their mother died 11 years ago and their father died 15 years before that, the brother said. He last spoke to his sister about a month ago to discuss estate matters of their brother, who died four years ago. “This is a shock,” he said.

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Krystal Reil said the last time she saw her mother was four days before her death, she said. The women spent the afternoon shopping downtown at the Loblaws on College St.

Plytas bought Krystal a new bathing suit and sweets for her three grandchildren, Krystal said. The pair enjoyed each other’s company over a picnic lunch of shawarma sandwiches in a downtown park.

“I just want everyone to know that she was the most kind woman I ever met and if I turn out to be half the woman she was, I’m lucky.”