The victim of last week’s homicide on Dallas Road was neither homeless nor a drug addict, her family said Thursday.
Bree Sara Gamble, 47, was a great mother and an amazing server and cook who reached out to the less fortunate, said Steve Lalonde, her former partner and father of their 17-year-old daughter.
“This is a huge shock. It’s out of this world for her. We want people to know this happened to a person it shouldn’t have happened to. Bree has such a good circle — many are really feeling the loss from here to Toronto,” said Lalonde. “It’s pretty sad.”
In an interview from Toronto, Jorge Lozano said his daughter, who went by the name Brianna Lozano on social media, was a beautiful and creative woman, a singer, artist, actor and mother.
Police knocked on his door last week to tell him his daughter had been found lying on the grass, near a sidewalk on Dallas Road, around 6 a.m. on March 3. Her death is considered a homicide.
“We are all grieving very much,” said Lozano. “It’s one of the most powerful feelings I have felt. My mother died, my father died, but this is different. This is a very difficult situation. Very painful.”
Gamble’s family and friends are upset that her death has been repeatedly connected to the encampments in Beacon Hill Park, said Lalonde.
“Bree was never homeless. She was an artist and always had the most beautiful and clean home you would ever enter,” he said. “And she definitely wasn’t a drug addict. She worked many jobs. She had a normal life. She kept a home. She never lost anything or threw away anything to drugs. She may have done drugs, but it wasn’t her life.”
Gamble had struggles, but she was constantly trying to be a better person, said Lalonde.
“She wasn’t hanging out in Beacon Hill Park in a tent. She was murdered. Somebody murdered her and dumped her on the side of the road,” said Lalonde. “She was found with no wallet and no phone, which is not Bree. She would never be without her purse, which was the size of a garbage bag.”
Detectives with the Vancouver Island Integrated Major Crime unit are trying to retrace Gamble’s route that night. Investigators would like to talk to anyone who was driving on Cook and Douglas streets near Beacon Hill Park, on Dallas Road between Douglas Street and St. Charles Street or on Fort Street and Foul Bay Road between 11 p.m. March 2 and 5 a.m. on March 3. Police are especially interested in dash-cam video.
Lalonde said Gamble “did everything” for her daughter and was an “amazing” cook who cooked for anyone who wanted to eat.
She would take people in who had no food and give them lunch or dinner and offer them a shower, said Lalonde.
“That was the type of person she was. She would pick up strangers on the street, bring them home and feed them, then give them more food to take home with them,” said Lalonde, who met Gamble 20 years ago when she was working as a server at Café Mexico.
Gamble worked at many restaurants around Victoria. During the past two summers, she worked at a fishing camp on the North Island, working 18 hours a day for two months.
Lozano said he hopes police find his daughter’s killer soon.
“There’s a lot of violence against women and more should be done about it. If he killed her, he could kill another woman, definitely. She’s dead and whoever did it should be thrown in jail,” he said, his voice breaking.
