Funeral held for boy, 14, who drowned at Port Stanley as family’s tragedies mount

An earthquake in Turkey took two of their daughters last year. And last weekend, Lake Erie claimed one of their sons.

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A transplanted Syrian family living in London on Wednesday buried 14-year-old Omer Buz, who went into the water at Port Stanley’s main beach on Sunday but didn’t resurface, triggering an anguishing search that ended with the recovery of his body two days later.

The boy had gone swimming in the lake with his 17-year-old brother, Mohammed, but soon began struggling in the waves. Their father, Lami Buz, tried to save both his sons but couldn’t, with lifeguards rescuing both he and the older brother.

Losing another child, after two were killed in the Turkish earthquake, has left Omer Buz’s mother in hospital in “shock” and his father “holding himself” but also reeling, said Khaled Baroudi, a friend who helped the family to settle in London last fall.

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“It’s broken hearts,” Baroudi said, adding the mother is “in the hospital now because it’s not easy to lose three kids.”

A funeral service for Omer Buz was held Wednesday at the London Muslim Mosque, where Baroudi said condolences for the family were to run again Thursday and Friday from 9 pm to 11 pm

About 18 months ago, the family was dealt another terrible tragedy.

“This family – they came from Syria to Turkey, and they were refugees there, and after the earthquake which happened in Turkey, if you remember one year ago. . . they miss two daughters,” Baroudi said.

Baroudi said the family’s 13- and 17-year-old daughters were killed in the magnitude-7.7 earthquake that rocked Turkey and northern and western Syria in February 2023, killing about 60,000 people in the two countries.

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The family moved from Syria to Turkey in 2013, and left for Canada in the fall of 2023. They settled first in St. John’s, NL, before relocating to London because of its larger Muslim community, Baroudi said.

The family still has another daughter, in her early 20s, living in Turkey. Money raised from a GoFundMe fundraiser – more than $31,000 had been pledged as of Wednesday – would help pay for her to travel to Canada to be with the family, Baroudi said. Her presence would help the family’s recovery, he said.

Omer Buz recently graduated from London’s Emily Carr elementary school and planned to attend Mother Theresa secondary school in the fall, a friend told The Free Press.

A candlelight vigil for Omer Buz is scheduled Saturday at 8:45 pm at Port Stanley’s pier. His was the first drowning at Port Stanley since 2016, and one of just three in the last 20 years.

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