CTV News has learned the name of the man killed on E.C. Row Expressway earlier this week.

Keith Embree, 41, was struck by a pickup truck on Sunday morning and he later died in hospital.

His Windsor friends say they are shocked and saddened by his death and they are trying to raise money to help his family pay for a funeral in Nova Scotia.

They say he had everything to live for, as he was trying to collect the money he needed to return to Nova Scotia to see his daughter graduate from high school.

Now they are raising the money needed to support her education and to now pay for a funeral out east.

John Gagnon says he's still reeling from the loss of his friend Embree.

“He can be goofy or he can be the smartest person in the circle,” says Gagnon.

Although police won't verify it for privacy reasons, Gagnon says Embree is the man who was killed on E.C. Row.

“I seen him probably seven hours prior, he was in good spirits, laughing as usual,” says Gagnon.

Just before 7 a.m., police say a pickup truck collided with a pedestrian, who was walking on the eastbound lanes of EC Row, near the Dominion on-ramp.

“He didn't text me when he got back home, don't usually think anything of it,” says Gagnon.

But then police posted images on Facebook of two tattoos from the victim’s body. Gagnon went to police to identify them as being his friend's.

“We're in shock here, we're upset,” says Gagnon.

What they don't have, he says, are answers for why his friend was walking on EC Row.

“We've all done things in our lives that make everybody ask why, that’s the one thing he's going to leave us with is why and I'm not going to dwell on it, I can't, can't keep asking myself why,” says Gasgnon.

He and his friends are instead focusing on helping Embree's next of kin, who live in Cape Breton.

“His daughters' graduating this year and having a distant relationship like that is hard enough, he was looking forward to going,” says Gagnon.

They've organized a pasta dinner fundraiser for Sunday Jan. 24 at the Moose Lodge on Tecumseh Road West and have set up a GoFundMe page.