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Chokha Bayez got the motorcycle days before he died in a high-speed collision in downtown Hamilton.

“I don’t know how he got the bike,” said his older sister Nela Bayez. “He’d had it just a few days. He was excited about it… He was just a kid who wanted to have fun.”

She said her father was upset about the motorcycle and the two argued which is why the 20-year-old was driving down Main Street East at 2 a.m. Saturday instead of at their East Mountain home.

“My brother just drove away,” she said. “We still don’t know how this happened.”

She says police told them he was driving 140 km/h when the motorcycle struck the rear-quarter-panel of a pickup truck travelling south on James Street.

The 45-year-old Hamilton driver of the truck wasn’t injured.

But Bayez died soon after being rushed to Hamilton General Hospital.

“We don’t want to believe it,” said his sister. “It’s horrible… My poor baby angel brother. He was so beautiful.”

It wasn’t the first time Bayez was in an accident. His sister said his licence was revoked because of a previous car crash and he was driving without one the night he died.

The family doesn’t know why he was going so fast at the time of the collision despite being known for speeding in the past.

“He does stuff like that,” she said. “He’s young. Young boys do that. My brother was just the unlucky one.”

She said “he chose the wrong path” after dropping out of Sir Allan MacNab Secondary School. However, she says he didn’t drink or do drugs.

“He was a bit of a trouble maker,” she said. “We were just patient that he was going to become better. He was just in that phase you go through when you don’t really know what you want and you do what you want because you are young. We knew he would pass it. He didn’t get the chance. He didn’t live enough.”

Bayez hoped to be a musician and often did covers of Justin Bieber songs. His favourite was Let Me Love You.

“He loved singing and playing the guitar,” said his sister. “That was his passion.”

He exercised and worked out regularly to keep his body in top shape.

“He was such a good looking kid,” said his sister. “He had green beautiful eyes.”

He was very proud of his Kurdish heritage and had a tattoo of his parents on his arms.

He had just got a tattoo of a rose on his hand which is how his family confirmed it was him after seeing accident photos of the motorcycle in the news and calling police. He had no identification with him when he died.

“I want everyone to remember my brother,” she said. “He was a good person. He had so much passion.”

Bayez was the youngest of four children and the only boy.

“When he was born my parents were so so happy and now he’s left so soon,” said his sister.

He was very supportive of his sisters especially as two of them opened Avanté Salon & Spa on Upper Gage.

“He used to come all the time,” she said. “He was nice to everyone. He never said anything bad about anyone.”

Her parents take possession of a new house in two weeks and he was supposed to live there with them.

“So many good things were happening to my family,” she says. “He met a girl and he wanted to marry her. He was telling my mom, ‘I’m going to make you guys proud.'”

Police closed the intersection at Main Street East and James Street South for nearly nine hours after the accident. Witnesses are asked to contact Det.-Const. Matt Hewko at 905-546-4755.

Bayez is the 10th person to die in a motor-vehicle accident in Hamilton this year.


Source: The Hamilton Spectator