A young man killed at a B.C. house party on New Year's Eve is the third member of the family to die violently. One half-sibling was murdered by a serial killer, another lost her life in a house fire.
"We're fine, we'll get through this just like we did with the other two," said the man's mother, Christine MacMillan, weeping during a phone call from her Mission home. "My God, they've killed my child."
Her son, 21-year-old Payton Booker Buckner, known as Dexter, was killed in Mission after visiting a house party. He was of mixed race, and his death occurred after an altercation with some white supremacist youths, Ms. MacMillan said. According to reports, the youths were wearing swastikas.
"He called his brother Cody about 9 o'clock for help," she said. "He told him he had turned up at the party and these guys had made racial slurs. He said Dexter's friend stuck up for him and he was attacked."
Ms. MacMillan said Dexter's girlfriend and friend, who had gone with him to the party, managed to escape but Dexter did not. He was later found dead in the driveway of a home on Laurel Avenue. The RCMP's Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, which is responsible for investigating homicides in the Lower Mainland, is in charge of the case.
Dexter Buckner is the third child of Payton Buckner, who is divorced from Ms. MacMillan, to die. In 1987, Dexter's older sister, Vanessa, was slain by serial killer Gilbert Jordan. Mr. Jordan, a former hairdresser known as the "boozing barber," was linked to the deaths of at least seven young women. He would encourage the women to drink until they passed out and then poison them by pouring alcohol down their throats. In 1988, Mr. Jordan was convicted of killing Vanessa in a Vancouver hotel room.
Just two years after her death, Mr. Buckner's other daughter, Tony, died in a house fire. Police said the death was not suspicious.
The death of Dexter Buckner has left the family "devastated," Ms. MacMillan said. "I loved my stepdaughters like they where my own children. ... Now to have this happen is devastating, it is unbelievable, we're still so confused.
"He was very family-orientated, very close to his sisters and brothers. When people got to know him they loved him, he was always going out of his way for people."