Melissa Tomas never stopped believing she would be reunited with her dad Joseph Perron, with whom she lost touch more than two decades ago.

But when the 51-year-old man was beaten to death on June 13, she was cheated out of her dream to know her father.

Tomas said Perron had severe schizophrenia and had recently suffered from brain damage. She said she struggled over the years to find her dad, who lived in Nova Scotia, but had recently returned to Ontario.

Perron was allegedly killed by a complete stranger on West Lodge Avenue, just a kilometre from the rooming house where he lived. His daughter says Perron became disoriented and ended up in a field behind a building where he was attacked. Raymond Moore, 42, has been charged with second degree murder.

About a week after Perron’s murder, the Oshawa woman says she received a message from a Toronto police officer through Facebook, asking her if she was related to the 51-year-old.

“He messaged me that my name had come up in an investigation. So I called and that’s when I found out that my father had been murdered due to an extreme beating and died from internal bleeding for his spleen,” she said.

“That’s a horrible beating. A long process, to go through a beating, to die of such serious injuries.”

A short time later, Tomas says she learned more about her father’s death. After seeing a story on the Global News website, she found out that it took officers hours to respond to the crime scene.

So she started pushing for answers, and now, after months of trying to speak to police about the case, she has finally met with the superintendent in charge of 11 Division, Heinz Kuck; the detective in charge of her father’s case, Kathy Stephenson; and the crown attorney assigned to the case, Michael Callaghan.

“I found out that the police just did not attend his crime scene for an exponential time. I don’t understand how no one was available,” said an exasperated Tomas, after meeting with officials for about an hour. “They can say that they only have eight police cars at a time, but wow, honestly, that’s ludicrous.

“I don’t understand how they can’t break one officer off to stop an assault in progress, which turned into a murder, I honestly hope that never happens again.”

She also says it took paramedics about 45 minutes to arrive and police officers did not attend the crime scene for four to five hours, only returning to the scene with paramedics after eventually going to the hospital where Perron died.

“I don’t feel like my father would have died if an officer had shown up in time to stop this beating,” Tomas said.

A few days after the fatal beating, Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders acknowledged that a review was underway into the handling of the case.

“We will look to see what we can do to better any call,” Saunders said. “But to be clear, to isolate and cherry-pick a call and say, ‘That’s the Toronto police,’ it’s inflammatory. It’s wrong.”

The investigation is now complete. “The issues we were concerned about in June, regarding deployment of resources and consideration of other calls for service,” wrote Toronto police spokesperson Meaghan Gray in an email to Global News, “were substantiated by that review.”

Tomas says she has also filed a complaint with the Office of the Independent Police Review Director.

“I believe that if the police had arrived to break up the assault in progress, then my father would not have been beaten to death,” she wrote on the complaint form.

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