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Her son’s large red high school football hoodie hung loosely off her shoulders, No. 68, from the St. Andre Bessette Bulldogs, her “Gentle Giant.”

“He had a big heart and loved life,” Agnes Rutherford wrote in a victim impact statement about her 16-year-old son, Thomas Decoste.

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“He was a free spirit. His laughter was outstanding, just an amazing young man who had a bright future. He made me so proud.”

He was six-foot-three. He worked at a summer camp. When he was little, he loved his Hot Wheels.

While his sweatshirt brought her some comfort, she wrote that his death has forced her to wear a painful pair of emotional shoes. “I am wearing shoes that no woman deserves to wear. Yet, because of these shoes I am a stronger woman,” she wrote.

“These shoes have given me the strength to face anything. They have made me who I am. I will ever walk in the shoes of a woman who has lost a child.”

Decoste’s photograph, that of a smiling teen, was presented to the courtroom. While assistant Crown attorney George Christakos read his mother’s words to Ontario Court Justice Wayne Rabley, her former husband, Decoste’s stepfather, Andrew Rutherford, 42, sat quietly at the defence table.