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‘Her body was not there’: Mother describes finding daughter's charred remains in Halifax Walmart oven
The Halifax mother who opened the door to a Walmart walk-in oven to find her 19-year-old daughter burned to death inside roughly 18 months ago has broken her silence on the young woman’s tragic death.
“I opened the door and she was there” Mandip Kaur told The Daily Mail about the terrible night she discovered the charred and unrecognizable body of her only daughter, Gursimran Kaur, inside the bakery’s commercial oven at the department store where they both worked.
“I couldn’t handle myself. I was there on the floor with her for five or ten minutes. I didn’t know what had happened.”
While it was clearly her daughter, Mandip said in her eyes what remained was not.
“Her body was not there,” the mourning woman said. “I could not see her.”
As previously reported by National Post , the women, who had immigrated from India three years prior, were both on shift at the Mumford Road location in the city’s West End on the night Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024.
When Mandip couldn’t reach Gursimran via text or phone, she was concerned but assumed her daughter was either with a customer or on break. But after speaking to two managers who said they’d also not seen Gursimran in a while, Mandip’s worry heightened and they set about looking for her.
When they arrived in the bakery, one of the managers noticed a “black-brown liquid resembling tar” leaking from the back of the oven — fluid that would turn out to be coming from Gursimran’s body, which lay next to the baking racks.
Mandip said the sight made her hyperventilate and collapse to the floor.
“Within seconds, my life has changed forever,” she said.
She was eventually taken away as emergency responders arrived.
A month after her death, Halifax Police ruled it was not suspicious , noting at the time, “there are questions that might never have answers.” Just three weeks ago, Nova Scotia’s Department of Labour announced it had found no safety violations related to Gursimran’s gruesome end.
“Investigators determined the oven was in proper working order at the time of the incident, and no safety violations were identified that could have contributed to the worker’s death,” the department said in a news release . “The department also found no broader safety concerns associated with the type of oven.”
Mandip told the Mail the family is “not satisfied” that investigators haven’t produced concrete evidence about how Gursimran ended up inside the oven and could not get out, despite there being a working mechanism inside to allow her to exit.
They also don’t know how long she was in the oven, how much she suffered before dying or if she screamed for help.
“After 18 months investigation, they are unable to discover what happened,” she said.
“They don’t know. They don’t have any proof. No solid results.”
Mandip had been considering legal action against Walmart, but the recent Department of Labour decision severely weakens any case she can mount.
She shot down any suggestion that her daughter committed suicide. Gursimran was a happy girl, valedictorian of her class with sights set on one day studying medicine, and she’d spent the night before her death laughing and celebrating at a family event. More evidence that she wasn’t planning to take her own life came when a package she ordered arrived days after her death.
After a service at their local gurdwara, the family returned to India, where Gursimran’s ashes were scattered to the ocean in a private ceremony for kith and kin.
A GoFundMe for the family raised close to $200,000 in 24 hours.
The Walmart location was closed for four months after the fatality, during which time the bakery was renovated and moved to another section of the store. The new ovens are not walk-ins.
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