The mother of a 19-year-old Walmart employee found dead inside a bakery oven in 2024 has spoken publicly in new detail about discovering her daughter’s body, renewing attention on a case that police and workplace investigators have formally closed.
The renewed focus comes two weeks after Nova Scotia’s Labour Department said its workplace safety investigation found no violations and determined the oven was in proper working order at the time of the death. Police had already said in November 2024 that the death was not suspicious and that there was no evidence of foul play. Those findings ended the official investigations without criminal allegations, but they did not answer the question that has stayed at the center of the family’s grief: how Gursimran Kaur ended up inside the oven at the Halifax store where she worked with her mother.
Kaur died on Oct. 19, 2024, at the Walmart on Mumford Road in Halifax. Police said officers were called at about 9:30 p.m. after a report of a sudden death and found a 19-year-old employee dead in a large walk-in oven in the bakery department. In the interview published Friday, her mother, Mandip Kaur, described the moment she located her daughter after failing to find her on the job. Family and community accounts published in the days after the death said mother and daughter worked at the store together and that the mother grew alarmed when she could not reach her daughter by phone. The family later identified the victim as Gursimran Kaur, and members of Halifax’s Sikh community helped bring her name and story into public view as the official investigation was still underway.
What officials have said since then has been limited but important. Halifax Regional Police announced on Nov. 18, 2024 that the death had been determined not to be suspicious and that there was no evidence of foul play. Police said investigators met with the family before making that announcement public. Later reporting, citing police spokesperson Martin Cromwell, said detectives had reviewed video footage, conducted several interviews and concluded that no one else was involved in the circumstances surrounding the death. The province’s Labour Department then carried its own inquiry forward under workplace safety law. On Feb. 27, 2026, it said investigators had completed an extensive review of the bakery oven and the workplace conditions, found that the machine was in proper working order, identified no safety violations that could have contributed to the death and found no broader safety concerns associated with that type of oven. Officials did not publicly explain the medical cause or sequence of events that led to Kaur’s death.
That gap between official findings and public understanding is what keeps the story alive. Authorities have ruled out a criminal case and ruled out a workplace safety violation, but they have not publicly released a narrative explaining how the death occurred. In late October 2024, while the investigation was still active, police described the case as complex and urged the public not to speculate. At that point, officers had not determined how Kaur got inside the oven, according to reporting based on statements from police. The new interview with her mother does not resolve that question, but it does shift the story back toward the family’s experience after months in which the official updates were mostly procedural. By speaking now, more than 16 months after the death, the family has made clear that the province’s finding of no safety violations did not bring the kind of closure that a legal conclusion can suggest on paper.
The case also drew wide attention because of the setting and the age of the worker. Kaur was 19. Community and family organizers said she had come to Canada from India with her mother and had worked at the Halifax Walmart for about two years. In the week after her death, the Maritime Sikh Society organized a fundraiser that quickly drew large support, with reports saying it rose past C$140,000 and later to about C$194,000 before donations were closed so the funds could be distributed to the family. A vigil outside the store drew co-workers, community members and others who had followed the case from a distance. The store remained closed for months after the death. When Walmart reopened the Mumford Road location in early February 2025, the company said it had completed a full renovation, moved the bakery area to the front of the store and replaced the oven as part of a broader renovation program. Those steps changed the physical site, but not the basic facts the public was left with.
There has been no criminal prosecution and no announced enforcement action under provincial workplace law. That is the clearest procedural point in the case. Police closed their investigation after determining the death was not suspicious, and the province closed its safety investigation after finding no violations. Labour Minister Nolan Young said when the provincial findings were released that the government’s responsibility was to understand what happened, determine whether safety requirements were met and use the findings to support prevention efforts. The department also said it would continue to engage with and support the family as the investigative process concludes. For now, officials have not announced further public findings, additional hearings or any new investigative step. That leaves the case in an unusual place: formally concluded by the state, still emotionally open for the family, and still missing a public explanation detailed enough to quiet the questions that followed the death from the first week.
The human details remain the ones that have stayed with Halifax. A mother and daughter went to work at the same store. At some point during a Saturday evening shift, the daughter could no longer be found. Her mother began looking for her, asked others for help and eventually made the discovery that turned an ordinary workday into a case followed across Canada and beyond. In the months that followed, police asked the public to avoid speculation, community members built a memorial outside the shuttered store and fundraisers helped relatives travel and manage funeral costs. The latest interview does not add a legal turning point, but it does add something else: the voice of a parent whose grief has outlasted the official timeline. In a case with no charges, no violation findings and no more public investigative milestones on the calendar, that is now the clearest new development.
As of March 13, the official position is unchanged: police say the death was not suspicious, and Nova Scotia says its workplace investigation found no safety violations. What has changed is that the family is again speaking in public, pressing the same unanswered question that has lingered since Oct. 19, 2024.
Author note: Last updated March 13, 2026.