A woman killed in her Burnaby apartment last week is being remembered as an indiscriminately caring and compassionate woman who opened her home and heart to anyone in need.
Bayush Hagos, 57, was found dead in her apartment around 6: 30 a.m. on Sept. 1. Police had been called to the residence, located at 4134 Maywood St., east of Central Park, for a domestic dispute.
Inside, officers found Hagos dead and another woman injured. The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team is now handling the investigation.
The injured woman remained in hospital being "medically assessed ... with non-lifethreatening injuries" as of Wednesday afternoon, said IHIT spokeswoman Jennifer Pound. Police say the woman is a suspect, but has not been charged.
While police are investigating an alleged dispute between the two women, it is not believed to be a domestic one, Pound said. Ken Campbell met Hagos about 20 years ago through his wife, who worked with Hagos at the Vancouver and Lower Mainland Multicultural Family Support Services. Hagos began working there as a counsellor shortly after arriving from Ethiopia in the late 1980s, he said. Campbell was most taken by her openness and willingness to help everyone - particularly those in the Ethiopian community.
"Either she sponsored them directly or through her church, or she helped them find a place to live, she got them some funding, she got them housing, she got them schooling, she got them a doctor," Campbell said.
"You need something, you go to Bayush. She's everybody's mother."
Campbell recalled thinking as much when he, his wife and another friend travelled to Ethiopia with Hagos in 2005.
"I remember we were in a hair salon, and in walked this man - and I work in mental health, so I could recognize his disorder - who was completely, floridly psychotic at the time," Campbell said. "And the girls were just totally laid back about his being there. They just saw it as their job to look after him.
"That seemed to be the situation throughout Ethiopia: There's zero infrastructure, zero government supports. People just looked after each other." Hagos was involved in a 2003 report about abused immigrant women titled Assisting Immigrant Women Abused by Their Sponsors, which was put out by the B.C. Institute Against Family Violence. [email protected] [email protected]
