A 19-year-old Walmart employee was found dead inside a walk-in oven in Canada by her mother who also worked there. Identified as Gursimran Kaur, the victim was burned to death on October 19 at Walmart bakery, media reports said.
Halifax Regional Police reported that they responded to a call at 9:30 pm at the Walmart located at 6990 Mumford Rd., where they discovered the body of a young woman inside a “large walk-in oven in the store’s bakery department.”
Kaur and her mother had been working there for two years. That evening, after not seeing her daughter for an hour, Kaur’s mother began searching for her. She asked people nearby and tried calling her, but received no response.
“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,” a community fundraiser for the family said.
Authorities stated on Tuesday that the cause and manner of death have not yet been determined, and the investigation remains ongoing.
According to the Maritime Sikh Society, Kaur and her mother are originally from India. Her father and brother are still in India, and the organisation is working to bring them to Canada.
So far, the fundraiser has collected over $75,000 Canadian dollars to support the family.
On Wednesday, Walmart informed NBC News that the store is closed until further notice. The Nova Scotia Department of Labour, Skills and Immigration also issued a stop-work order for the store’s bakery and a piece of equipment on Tuesday.