Fearing she would not survive cancer, Ann Marie Josephs made a decision. She would leave half of her worldly possessions to her daughter, the one of her five children who was struggling in life. “This was for her,” Josephs told a Star reporter, sitting in the living room of the Brampton home where she raised her.
It was only a year ago, after being diagnosed with metastatic oral cancer, that Josephs wrote a will to ensure her kids inherited the property. “Now she’s not here.” Josephs, a financial planner, never imagined she’d outlive any of her children, especially after a doctor’s warning last year that she would only have a few months to live if she didn’t have major surgery to remove the cancer.
But on a Wednesday morning in July, her world came crashing down. Her youngest, Sarah AnnMarie Prehay, 23, died after at a plaza in Scarborough. Ann Marie Josephs in her daughter Sarah Prehay’s bedroom.
Prehay died on July 24 after she was caught in the crossfire of a shooting in Scarborough. The woman Josephs spent years protecting and fighting for was gone in a flash of violence that her mother understands no better today, some three months later. Sarah was a skilled basketball player with a love of cooking and a cheerful personality, said Josephs, who has since recovered from cancer treatment.
Despite spending much of her youth and early adulthood in and out of psychiatric hospitals, Sarah worked hard to establish her independence and cared for Josephs during h.