Bo Shao lit cigarette after cigarette Thursday, anxious after a police sergeant visited his house to tell him his wife was dead.

Shao, in shock and denial, stuffed another cigarette butt into an overflowing ashtray and quickly put on a winter jacket.

“Everything is wrong,” said Shao, standing in the home he shared with Yu Cheng, a photo of their daughter nearby. “That was my wife.”

He scurried outside and retraced the steps his wife took every morning on her way to work, making his way to the nearby Vaughan intersection flooded with police.

He needed some sort of proof.

But the body of Cheng, 52, had been removed from the intersection of Dufferin St. and Apple Blossom Dr., where police said she was killed in a hit-and-run around 6:30 a.m.

Shao returned home, his eyes on the sidewalk as he walked.

Cheng was crossing at the lights when hit by an SUV travelling south on Dufferin, said York Region Const. Blair McQuillan.

The impact tossed her to the opposite side of the large intersection and she was pronounced dead on the road.

The driver fled, but surrendered to police around 9:30 a.m.

Shao said his wife was walking to a bus stop on the way to her job at the Environment ministry.

The ministry said Cheng began working in its environmental sciences and standards division six months ago on a contract.

Neighbour Jayesh Daya said Cheng and Shao were a wonderful couple and often invited him into their home.

“She loved to garden and we’d compare our gardens,” said Daya, smiling at the memory. “There’s just no happy resolution to this.”

Before Shao visited the intersection, his wife’s body remained on the road for at least two hours, covered with a white sheet, her purse, a single winter boot and pools of blood nearby.

Police shut down local road traffic, but children arrived on foot at a private school that backs onto the intersection.

“We are taping up all the windows and are not allowing children outside,” said Jessica Pasternak, the school’s assistant director.

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Gino De Luca, 47, of Vaughan, faces three charges, including failure to remain at an accident causing death. He is due in Newmarket court Jan. 10.

With files from Graham Slaughter

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