Police say death of young woman found in Halifax Walmart walk-in oven not suspicious

HALIFAX — The death of a young Halifax woman whose body was found last month in a Walmart’s walk-in oven was not suspicious and there was no evidence of foul play, police said Monday.

Nineteen-year-old Gursimran Kaur’s Oct. 19 death in the store’s bakery is now the subject of a separate workplace investigation led by Nova Scotia’s Labour Department.

Const. Martin Cromwell, a spokesman for Halifax Regional Police, posted a video on Facebook, saying police “do not believe that anyone else was involved in the circumstances surrounding the woman’s death.”

Cromwell went on to say investigators had conducted several interviews, reviewed video footage and worked with the provincial Labour Department and the Nova Scotia Medical Examiner Service. Exactly what caused Kaur’s death has yet to be released.

“We acknowledge the public’s interest in this case and that there are questions that may never have answers,” Cromwell said in the video. “Please be mindful of the damage public speculation can cause. This woman’s loved ones are grieving.”

Police said they had informed Kaur’s family of their findings. “The family asks the public to respect their privacy and the dignity and memory of their loved one as they receive this news,” police said in a separate statement.

A Sikh organization had earlier confirmed that Kaur’s body was found by her mother, who had worked with her daughter at the Mumford Road store for about two years. The Maritime Sikh Society says Kaur, a Sikh woman originally from India, had immigrated to Canada with her mother.

The society issued a statement last month saying that on the night of Oct. 19, the mother became frantic after her daughter failed to answer her phone during the Saturday night shift. The mother, whose name was not released, eventually opened the bakery oven and found her daughter’s burned body, the statement said.

She was “a young beautiful girl who came to Canada with big dreams,” the society said on an online fundraising page.

On Oct. 30, the organization said Kaur’s father and brother were headed to Halifax from the Punjab region of India, having received emergency visas on compassionate grounds.

Balbir Singh, secretary of the Maritime Sikh Society, said Monday that family members did not want to speak to the media and had asked the society not to make any statements on their behalf.

With the police investigation into possible criminality completed, the Labour Department said Monday that it was leading its own investigation. “Workplace investigations are complex and take time,” the department said, adding that it had no other details to share.

The department had imposed a stop-work order on the bakery soon after the death was reported, but that order was lifted on Oct. 28. That came “after the oven was assessed and determined to have been operating as per the manufacturer’s requirements,” the department said.

At the time, the department said that in the last five years, labour investigators had conducted nine inspections at the store, none of which produced any enforcement action. On Nov. 7, Walmart said the oven would be removed from the store.

As of Monday, the store remained closed.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 18, 2024.

Michael MacDonald, The Canadian Press