Young Female Security Officer Murdered in Canada
Kelowna Canada March 4, 2022
The parents of a young woman slain while working at UBC Okanagan have arrived in Kelowna, the vice-president of the Okanagan Sikh Temple says.
Expectations are that a private funeral service will be held soon in either Kelowna or Vancouver for Harmandeep Kaur, 24, who was attacked early Saturday morning at the university campus.
“The family wants some privacy. We know a lot of people, both in our community and all around Kelowna, are very upset by what’s happened but the family doesn’t want thousands of people showing up at her funeral,” Paramjit Patara said Wednesday.
Kaur’s parents travelled from India not knowing their daughter had died in what police describe as a murder, Patara said.
“My understanding is that they were told she had been very seriously injured and they had to come to Canada right away,” he said. “They didn’t get more information than that. The family didn’t want her parents to travel from India knowing their daughter had been murdered. It’s a long ways, 18 hours, to get here from India, and the family didn’t want her parents to have to go through the pain by themselves.
“Now that they’re here, they’ll have support from their relatives and the community,” Patara said.
Kaur had been working as a security guard when she was attacked Saturday morning just before 6 a.m. She died Sunday in hospital.
“It’s so shocking that something like this could happen,’ Patara said. “I think the community just can’t really believe it.”
Police arrested a man shortly after the attack on Kaur. He is also said by police to have been working at the university, though in what capacity has not been made clear. He is being detained under the Mental Health Act.
A GoFundMe page set up to help Kaur’s family had raised almost $30,000 as of Wednesday morning.
Organizer Kuljit Pabla, a West Kelowna man who was a relative of Kaur’s, writes on the page that she had come to Canada in 2015 hoping to train as a paramedic.
After three years in Vancouver, Pabla says, Kaur moved to Kelowna in 2018. She had been studying at Okanagan College while earning money working as a security guard.
Kaur was “endlessly fun, motivating, and loving”, Pabla says, and had received her permanent residency status in January. She had planned on transferring her studies from the college to the university, Pabla says.
“She risked and lost her young life while patrolling the very grounds that she had hoped to one day walk as a student,” he says.
