Friends of Cody Thompson knew the bad news was almost inevitable, but it didn't make it any less shocking.
The body of the missing 24-year-old Guelph man was discovered in the Eramosa River on Saturday. An autopsy was to be conducted Tuesday.
"We prepared for the worst," Candiss Pettitt said. "It's been so long. We knew something wasn't right and we knew he wasn't coming home.
"Our whole point all along was to bring him home. He has come home now and everybody can have that closure," Pettitt said.
"We still had that hope that maybe he'd gone MIA or was in hiding. Even though we knew, we still held out hope," said Moira Barber.
Thompson's friends are now trying to help Thompson's scattered family put him to rest and have started a gofundme page to raise money for his burial.
As of 7 p.m.Tuesday the Put Cody To Rest fundraising page had raised $1,325 in the first day. The goal is $10,000.
"We had decided to do that before they even found Cody," Pettitt said. "Any help we can give the family, we will."
Pettitt spent Tuesday morning looking for flowers.
"We knew this was coming, but it's still so hard," Pettitt said. "Cody is a close friend and his girlfriend is a close friend."
Thompson disappeared on April 1 after a phone conversation with his father. It was the last anyone heard from him and his bank account, phone and prescriptions all went ignored after that date.
A photocopied piece of his birth certificate was found in the area of the covered bridge just south of downtown, but searches by police and later by friends, family and volunteers proved fruitless.
Pettitt and Barber helped organize the search for Thompson two Saturdays ago.
Thompson battled addiction issues and is not the first friend that Barber and Pettitt have lost to the illness.
"It never gets easier, in fact it gets harder. The more I see go the harder it is because I know that life is killing them," Barber said.
Funeral arrangements were being made Tuesday. Pettitt said it will be in Guelph.
