Gursimran Kaur is a 19 year old woman who died in Halifax, Canada recently. She was found in the walk-in oven of a Walmart store.
Gursimran and her mother were originally from Ludhiana in India. Some reports say that they had moved to Canada from the United Kingdom three years ago. Gursimran’s father and brother remained living in India.
Both women were employed at the same Walmart store. They had been working there for around two years at the time of the incident.
Gursimran was “a young beautiful girl who came to Canada with big dreams”, according to a GFM that has raised almost $200k for her family.
On Saturday October 19, 2024, Gursimran’s mother tried to find her daughter. She looked for around an hour and was unable to find her. I am unsure if they were both working or if the mother went to the store to see her daughter. She asked around and tried to call her to no avail.
According to the GFM:
“Mother started panicking as it was unusual for [Kaur] to switch her phone off during the day,” the fundraiser said. “Imagine the horror that her mother experienced who herself opened the oven.”
In a radio broadcast between an emergency dispatcher and firefighters on the night of the incident, the dispatcher said, “A female is locked in an oven in the bakery,” and that the “oven was on and it’s unsure if staff are able to turn it off.”
Another voice comes on the transmission to say that the young woman had been removed from the oven by the time first responders reached the scene.
A Walmart spokesperson declined to comment about whether “the woman was on shift when she died,” according to The Canadian Press.
Halifax Regional Police have said they are still attempting to determine the cause and manner of the Gursimran’s death and have said the investigation is “complex” and could be lengthy. In an emailed statement on Thursday October 24, police said they “have no new information to share with the public.”
Community members have spoken about how Gursimran’s mother is doing. “The first day I saw her was the day the incident happened. She was really distraught. She was really in great pain,” Halifax Maritime Sikh Society board member Satnam Randhawa told NBC News.
Craig Walsh, president of the eastern provinces council of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, said that Gursimran’s death raises workplace safety questions. Workers at the Mumford Road store are not unionized.
“There’s obviously a lot we don’t know, but there’s usually a lot of safety protocols in place for equipment like this. But the safety protocols only work if they’re checked on later and verified that they’re still operating.”
Sarah MacNeil, a spokeswoman for the Labour Department, said the department is continuing its investigation. She noted that the province’s occupational health and safety regulations require that “all devices used in workplaces must be operated in accordance with manufacturer’s specifications.”
She said over the last five years, labour investigators have conducted nine inspections at the Walmart on Mumford Road. No enforcement action was taken after those inspections and no orders or administrative penalties were issued, she wrote in an email to CBC Canada.
“We are heartbroken and our deepest thoughts are with our associate and their family,” a Walmart spokesperson said in a statement. “Our focus remains on taking care of our associates and making sure they have the support they need.”
SOURCE LIST
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/k7EdGvef1KsxFoCz
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/LTD34Ui4JPbYz28W
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/walmart-death-halifax-gursimran-kaur-1.7362013
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/walmart-death-halifax-gursimran-kaur-1.7362013