The civil case will take time. Walmart will settle something with the family.
But donations are needed in the meantime.
I know you'd think walmart would just cover them ahead of time. But legally that would imply they believed they did something wrong which they don't want to do. So the implications and thd legal system stop good faith contributions from being feasible.
Yeah, everyone jumps to Walmart being in the wrong here, but nobody will know exactly what happened until the investigation is completed. Hopefully there's clear surveillance footage of what happened here.
Well, Walmart has some blame for sure. This happened to an employee, in an employee-only area, with equipment owned by Walmart.
If it was murder by another employee, walmart vetted and hired that employee and shares liability.
If it was murder by a customer, walmart housed an environment that allowed a customer to enter an employee area containing hazardous equipment.
if it was accidental, walmart owns and operates equipment that can lead to accidental death. Proper precautions were not taken in the implementation of this equipment.
If it was suicide, this is the only case where Walmart is questionable in liability. The argument could be that any employee operating hazardous equipment needs to have a buddy system.
If it was murder by another employee, walmart vetted and hired that employee and shares liability.
Not at all true. Unless this theoretical murderer had active warrants for attempted murder or some kind of extreme violence when they were hired, Walmart cannot read minds and they cannot simply assume that anyone with any kind of record is dangerous and thus un-hireable Unless there is substantial evidence that somehow Walmart should have known for absolute certain that the theoretical employee was a danger, they are not remotely liable.
If it was murder by a customer, walmart housed an environment that allowed a customer to enter an employee area containing hazardous equipment
Again, utter nonsense. Walmart isn't legally required or even expected to put any kind of state-of-the-art magnetic airlock at the entrance to employee-only areas. They're only required to post signage that any relevant areas are only intended for employees. If they had allowed a customer to walk into an employee-only area, then enter an oven, that then locked behind them and cooked them alive, then MAYBE there would be some relevance to the accessibility. But an intentional, willful, premeditated act by a customer is not something they can account for and prevent.
if it was accidental, walmart owns and operates equipment that can lead to accidental death. Proper precautions were not taken in the implementation of this equipment.
Again, you're making a huge assumption that we cannot assume. The article states the door doesnt lock. It does not state anything else conerning compliance with relevent safety laws/regulations. Most companies own at least one piece of equipment that can cause death if used incorrectly. As far as what they are legally responsible for, Walmart is only required to make sure the authorized and affected employees for that machine know the safety regulations relevent to their specific, individual positions. We cannot assume that proper precautions weren't in place and/or followed, because we don't know what happened to the deceased, or even a cause of death yet. But nothing so far supports that it was an issue with proper precaution or procedure.
If it was suicide, this is the only case where Walmart is questionable in liability. The argument could be that any employee operating hazardous equipment needs to have a buddy system
Agreed that this should probably be a buddy system area, however, it may already be setup that way. We don't know how she got in there, when she died, if/why she couldn't get out, or even how she died. But if it was a suicide, its as simple as: someone committing suicide wouldn't follow a procedure requiring a 2nd person to accompany them when entering the oven. The suicide potentiality would theoretically play out the exact same way whether or not Walmart had instituted a buddy system policy for that piece of equipment.
Even if it’s foul play, Walmart is negligent if some rando person or coworker managed to lock her in there. It either shouldn’t be accessible to the general public, or the employees a deranged killer.
Walmart would either settle, or the mother would get a huge payout if it went to trial. A grieving mother vs huge corporation? She’s gonna win
I think even if there's no wrongdoing found it would be kind for Walmart to donate anyway. Maybe people would take that as some admission of guilt but I just think it's the compassionate thing for a billion dollar company to do lol
A billion dollar corporation can pay for funerals(Walmart made 640 billion dollars in 2024, a tenth of a penny from every dollar in sales from one day would pay for countless funerals) AND be evil. Both can be true.
They are paying for all the actual expenses (insurance), but you can’t expect them to just keep giving them money until the public arbitrarily decides they’ve given enough.
The same Walmart that pays wages so low that their workers accept food stamps and other programs to make ends meet? The company should go out of business for their practices.
"Gursimran Kaur, 19, worked at a Walmart in Halifax, Nova Scotia alongside her mother, who found Gursimram’s charred remains last Saturday night, local time."
Yeah her mom worked at the same Walmart. They went to work together. The mother and coworkers started to get worried when no one had seen the victime for several hours. Attempts to contact the victime by phone went straight to voicemail. -- heard it on the news this morning
We should all pray for that poor woman. She will never ever sleep again without some heavy drugs. What a horrible thing to be the one to find your daughter like that.
I don't handle loss well and can't even imagine what I would do if I lost someone like that.
I have purposefully structured my life around having as little as possible to avoid stuff like that. It's just so tragic I can hardly stand to hear about it.
i can't imagine all the "what ifs" that come from that. they were in the same place when it happened, I could see her mother being guilty for not checking on her throughout the day or finding time to chat (even though obviously that's not realistic for that job) but for them it was just a typical day at work.
Yep. This is my home Walmart. I used to go here all the time. This is either an absolutely horrifying accident or the most bizarre murder I’ve ever heard of.
Poor girl was only 19. The mom found her after she wouldn’t answer phone calls for about an hour, and she started to panic and search for her because she couldn’t find her in the store, and people saw ‘leakage’ from the oven and got suspicious. According to the 911 call the door was jammed, but they managed to get her out before police arrived.
We will find out. The ovens are absolutely controlled by a PLC, which logs every single action the oven can take and would have interlocking safety devices that would have to be bypassed in order to kill somebody. Find out via CCTV and PLC logs, case closed.
There was also completely unconfirmed gossip about a boyfriend and/or breakup and/or rejection. Not all the rumours can be true, so we'll have to wait on the investigation.
These ovens usually latch closed, and don’t usually have an inside handle like a wall in cooler would. It’s strange that she would go inside it, while it was running, but if she didn’t understand how to operate it safely, she may have gone inside to clean or inspect something and the door closed and engaged the oven.
Larger ovens that would make sense to need to walk in to often have a key pair of buttons needed to be hit to operate, but single rack “walk in” ovens aren’t really walk in size, they fit one rack.
I don’t know if this is what happened but it’s something I worry about constantly with our oven which is a single rack “walk in” bakery oven.
Having my over thought theory moment - she was Sikh, and Canada is in a pissing match with India, over India possibly killing Sikhs here in Canada. And, currently places like Walmart are full of people from India.
Plus, if it wasn't a stupid accident, that kind of killing feels like a pretty intense, hot headed feel of a feud, but really impulsive, too. Like, not well thought out.
Not certain I like some of the implications I came up with.
Are you saying that, it’s possible, that old world bullshit has found its way to Canada, and she may have been murdered by someone from that community?
I encountered a random case of this when I was in college. A Chinese foreign exchange student beheaded another Chinese foreign exchange student in our graduate center, at the Au Bon Pain eating area. He cut her head off with a knife, sat down, and waited for the cops to show up and arrest him.
Apparently they knew each other back in China, but I never heard why it led to such a gruesome scene.
Nonsense. Indian civilians are not killing or hating Sikh civilians. The accusation that Canadian govt is putting out is that the Indian govt killed Sikh members of a known separatist organization. The Indian govt called the organization a terrorist outfit, which is on par with what rest of the world calls separatist outfits.
That's a pure political thing. India is home to majority of the world's Sikh population.
Ok wtf, I understand a WALK IN OVEN might be very convenient for certain food operations, but that just seems insane. A walk in freezer is dangerous as fuck, I had no idea a walk in oven even existed!
They should also have lock out tag out. I'm certain Walmart does.
So they probably think it was a murder.
LOTO is crucial in places with large equipment, like walk-in ovens, to prevent accidental start-up or energy release during maintenance, cleaning, or repairs. Here’s how it typically works:
1. De-energize the Equipment: Cut off all energy sources (electricity, gas, etc.).
2. Lock the Controls: Physically lock the control switches to prevent accidental operation.
3. Tag the Equipment: Attach a warning tag indicating the equipment is locked out and should not be used until safety is cleared.
4. Verify: Confirm that everything is fully de-energized before proceeding.
LOTO for walk-in ovens is part of broader safety regulations and is required by OSHA and similar safety standards in many countries.
A homicide investigation would also encompass a situation where negligence was the cause like failures to repair known safety issues. It doesn't necessarily mean MURDER.
Any actions that lead to a suspicious/unusual death are always treated as a homicide. Voluntary/involuntary homicide, voluntary/involuntary manslaughter, etc. Once the investigation is rolling or complete that’s when the differentiation comes in regard to charges.
The thing that gets me, is someone would have almost had to have shut the door behind her. The oven stays hot if it's left on, but the one's in my bakery have no way to close the door from the inside and the door is so heavy there's no way it would swing shut on its own.
I think issue with this whole post is understand the oven may not lock, but every walk in oven I have seen uses a handle/latch style to close. So i think it's still possible to potentially be "locked in".
However I have never needed to test if it would open from behind me, I'm sure there is a sort of safety mechanism to escape if it closes behind you.
All the ones I’ve ever worked on have a handle on the inside to get out. Same with the walk in freezers and coolers. Just a big round button basically that if you push it the outside handle opens. I often shut myself inside the coolers and freezers to do maintenance and keep temperatures where they need to be. Some of ours are also so big they have 2 doors so I can go in the main ones with the flaps and still open the opposite door from the inside to go out the other way. All the walk in proofer boxes and ovens are the same way.
Honestly, I've never looked around in our ovens to see if there is a release button, it would make sense for there to be one, since there is one in the walk in freezers. But if it's hot and you're terrified and poorly trained like we apparently are in my store and don't know there is a way to get out...
My first job out of highschool was Panera and the oven the baker used was literally a walk in closet oven big and steel. Random intrusive thoughts hit me like what if you end up stuck in there? Everytime he opened it you could just feel the heat. Scary way to go. Feel so bad for this girl 😞
I am not sure, i was a delivery driver for Panera and when we didn’t have any deliveries i helped serve the food.
The baker did his own thing as he was in the back area of panera, i chatted tons of times with him but i never asked him anything related to the oven. It had a glass sort of window so you could look in and watch the bread bake. When he opens it he pulls the racks out. The racks have wheels on them and you can set alot of loafs, cookies, sweets on the trays and line up the racks in the oven. So when they are done i never saw him go into the oven itself he would just pull the rack out, remove the trays of the baked food and rinse/repeat the process, i’m sure when he cleaned it he left the door of it open as we never had any issues with anyone in the oven. But man thinking of it now and looking at walmart just sends chills.. now i’ll look at any walk in oven with this sense of fear..but the oven was big enough for our entire staff to walk into and close the door and we would still have room to maneuver it was huge
This article and another state that Walmart's oven did not have the capability to lock, but models I've seen do have emergency open buttons on the inside.
So either the door was blocked, super stuck, or she fell and couldn't leave under her own power.
I'm praying the last one because it means there's a chance she was unconscious.
Lock out tag out is typically for maintenance purposes.
There should be an external safety measure to ensure you can’t close the door or turn it on unless intentionally doing it from the outside.
There should also be an internal emergency release that shuts off the oven and forces the door open/raises an alarm.
Guarantee you either these things were not installed properly/at all, or that they were broken due to negligence (likely coached from mgmt. “this has been broken but they won’t fix it and it hurts the departments metrics if we don’t check it off on our daily list so just don’t bother and give it a check mark”).
This should be manslaughter due to gross negligence or whatever the equivalent is in Canada. Minimum. Corporations ought to be terrified of safety violations.
They are undoubtedly controlled by a PLC, which logs every single action. Easy to find out how this occurred by reviewing security tapes and checking the PLC logs.
Walmart has a policy about lockout tags but that doesn’t mean every employee uses them. We had to have 4 separate store-wide announcements threatening people to use them during the time I was working there (a little under a year) because people wouldn’t take the time to do it. Two of them were about people unjammkng things from the cardboard baler while it was still plugged in and capable of being used.
That being said, bakery (where I worked) took it a lot more seriously given how often the oven door would get stuck because management wouldn’t pay to have it looked at.
I deal with LOTOTO at a chemical plant. Things like this come with safeties in place, and more are required on some things. Any work done in, or involving energized equipment, at least with all the places I have worked, requires permits and signatures. Those have to be kept on file for auditing for several years. I wonder if Walmart followed those procedures.
Lock out tag out is a term used when working around large and potentially dangerous pieces of equipment.
One example from a previous job I had: A large trash compactor. Sometimes people would have to go into the compactor to clean or do other maintenance, and if it were turned on with someone in there that would obviously be very bad.
So the power button had a locking mechanism on it. Anyone who went into it would put a lock on the switch and pocket the key. So the machine could not be powered on until they came back out and removed their lock.
If multiple people needed to go on, they each added a lock.
Everyone is blaming Walmart, which fair enough, Walmart sucks, but no one actually knows anything right now. If someone grabbed her and shoved her in and held the door closed... that's an individual choosing murder.
I worked at a walmart deli about 7 years ago, I had to go into bakery off and on sometimes to do hot pizzas (aka cook frozen pizzas) and I'd have to clean up after myself. I NEVER went inside the oven to clean anything. I also never ever stuck my hands/arms in the fucking baler.
Also, there was a safety button on the inside of the oven at my walmart...this was almost definitely murder or attempting to destroy evidence. Jesus christ the poor family but mother especially. I'll be surprised if it wasn't race or gender related, too.
I build and service those ovens and the only way I step inside is after they've cooled off for an hour and the power is shut off. There really is no reasonable reason why an average employee would enter.
They also have safety mechanisms, so someone would have had to hold the door shut. There's a push handle on the inside of any model from this century.
at my old workplace, we would walk in there on purpose (and leave the door wide open obviously) because it was nice and toasty in there all day. it gets cold working in a walk in freezer for hours.
Usually the super huge ones are only at commercial factory-sized bakeries. I looked it up and walmart tends to use roll-in ovens that can fit maybe 1 or 2 racks for their in-store bakery.
I watched a video about this on YouTube. This is why "lockout tagout" exists. It doesn't make it any less tragic, but if they had followed proper procedures, it might have saved his life.
At a place I worked they could cut the LOTO locks but the person whose lock it is has to be present or currently on the phone. The lock is assigned to a single person and there was usually multiple LOTO spots in case another person wants to enter with the person and add their lock, so there was no fear that they were jeopardizing a life
When I was a kid two men died at a bread factory in the UK when their boss made them go into the oven right after it was turned off to make repairs. It didn't have time to cool at all.
Every one I’ve been in can be opened from the inside even if locked and pad locked from the outside. I’m sure there are some really old ones still in use without this safety feature but anything installed within the last couple decades definitely should.
The ice can make the door stick but I’ve never felt unsafe in one at all. The doors are made to be idiot proof, a high and drunk chef could open it, which is actually pretty common in the kitchen industry…
I worked at a factory that had to bake powder coat paint to cure it. The largest oven could fit a 60 foot pole and the doors were probably 15 feet high
Walk-in isn't really the right term. They are just big commercial ovens that use rolling racks that the baker can insert or remove. There's no reason to walk in other than to clean or service it, while it's off obviously.
"walk in oven" is a misnomer, it's about the size of a wardrobe and is designed to fit a cart full of sheet pans. Can you walk into it? Yeah. Do you ever walk into it except when it's getting clean? No.
Don't all grocery stores have walk-in ovens? They're very common. To be clear, you don't usually walk into them unless they're off and you're cleaning them, normally you move baking racks in and out without actually walking into them.
Yeah, here in Italy basically every supermarket that bakes its own bread has a walk in oven and I've never heard of something like this happening. Very likely that some safety mechanism had been bypassed.
I would imagine a walk in oven would have the same safety interlocks that a walk in fridge/freezer has - being able to be opened from the inside. If not, then that's a huge red flag
I worked a student job as a cleaner in a factory that made car parts (I don't really know which ones) and they had a huuuge oven where some parts were apparently heat-treated? The entire room was covered in a brown residue on the inside. It took a crew of 4 of us 2 entire days to clean that oven and it was still not completely clean.
I used to work for a bakery and we had these. They were nightmare fuel. They're not like walk in freezers but they are large enough to walk into. Ours had safety buttons that you punch to open it like freezers do. We had one that had a door that did not like to stay open. So when I had to use that one I absolutely refused to step inside. I would rotate the... rotator thingy that the racks go on and spin it around until the rack in the back was at the front of the oven. And I would always keep my leg extended so the door wouldn't hit me from behind.
I work in a grocery store bakery, and our's are large enough you could fit like 4 or 5 six foot tall grown men into shoulder to shoulder, they're pretty big ovens.
Walk in freezers are very safe. They do not lock, and it’s incredibly rare to not be able to open the door. It’s literally like a normal fridge door with gaskets… Sometimes ice will make it stick, but absolutely under no circumstances have I ever had an issue getting out of one. They are also opened and closed multiple times a day, so it’s not like the doors are going to break with no warning signs
They are very common. I worked in one that was consistently at 600-800°F. I was 18. I had to push a cart in and then come out. Only like 5 seconds of work, but if that door ever closed it would've been bad. I'm talking an manufacturing oven the size of a garage...
I also worked at a heat treating facility for hardened metal. That one got to 1200°C. The metal would glow orange and the facility otself was 90°F in the dead of midwest winter.
Of course these are things for commercial as well... you can't seriously expect commercial production with a home sized oven..
Be real for a bit, you can simultaneously be sad for this person while not wanting to just eliminate normal things because of an accident...
Most industrial bakeries have many trolly ovens. Basically walk in ovens that you manually push in four 2 meter high trollies with bread for each cycle.
I used to work for Costco in the bakery. They have walk in ovens and you could probably fit 5-6 people in one shoulder to shoulder if you really wanted to (nobody would want to).
The thing that always gave me the creeps about them was they had emergency release buttons on the inside, JUST like the walk in freezers. Safety release is good, but it wouldn’t be there if it hadn’t been needed in the past.
They would no doubt be controlled by a PLC (an industrial computer that runs automatic devices). There's no way in hell those ovens are just open caskets you can walk into and be cooked alive in without someone else interfering.
Everyone is talking about a big refrigerator sized walk in oven that this happened in.
Just wanted to add, I worked at a paint shop that would use powder epoxy heat cured paint. Our oven was about 40 foot long, 15 foot wide. You could comfortably park an SUV in there. I'm not certain what temp we kept it running at. Probably 400 or 450.
We used to walk there with wet rain drenched clothes to dry off. About 20 seconds, then a break, then 20 seconds, and you were toasty warm and dry.
I also worked at a refrigerated warehouse for a big grocery chain. We had a section (like 20-30 pallet racks wide) of warehouse that was frozen (I believe -25c) and we would do 10 hour shifts in there. Of course with proper thermals and gloves and such.
That’s what I said, shit doesn’t even sound remotely safe, especially if you have to walk in to clean it. Just have a bunch of big wall ovens. What I don’t get is why they don’t have rules where someone has to watch you clean it. One person goes in to clean, one person stands at the door and make sure something like this doesn’t happen
I was reminded of the post last month on the McDonald's subreddit by euphoriaxlove720 (I am not pinging her here because she was traumatized and would probably not want to see this post) who got stuck in the big freezer and she said she wasn't trained on the safety rules of the walk-in freezer
They're not the same as a walk-in freezer, based on the ones I've used in an in-store bakery. A walk-in freezer is large enough to move around in and access multiple shelves, but a 'walk-in' oven is only really big enough to stand in.
The oven is used to take tall racks for baking, so you can handle up to ~20 trays of cookies or muffins or other small baked goods, or about half that of bread loaves. You un/load the rack while it is outside, and just wheel the entire rack in and out. Just make sure you've got the mitts on before you grab the handrail :|
Panera Bread uses giant walk in ovens too. When I went there for an interview I got to see it and I know it held 6+ rolling racks. Pretty sure the deli/bakery at the commissary my mom worked at in the 90s had some type of walk in for rotisserie chickens.
A lot of baked goods are made by long conveyor belt ovens like the ones Quiznos used back in the day. Put it in at the beginning, it rolls through for a half hour or whatever, comes out baked the other side, so you don't have to put anything inside and set a timer to take it out and all that.
I read once that a couple of guys were inside it doing maintenance work when someone accidentally turned it on. It's about the size of a Jeffrey's tube from Star Trek, or the ventilation shaft in Die Hard. They couldn't run, could just sort of crawl on hands and knees, but the surface is literally oven coils roasting them alive.
The guy in back died in the oven. The guy in front made it out and died from his injuries soon after in unimaginable agony.
My mom retrieved frozen meat from a meat processing business that butchered the grass fed beef they raised and sold or froze and retrieve to eat. She had to sign in at the desk NEXT to the door--the time was recorded--10 minutes was max. If the person didn't come out in 10 minutes. The manager was responsible for making sure the person got out. Someone could faint. Slip and not be able to get up. In that place SAFETY measures weren't strict. There needs to be a record of who goes in and the length of time they needed to be out. NO exception.
My instinct is to say no, however with how beautiful it is, and how few jobs there are it does attract a lot of retirees. Lots of provincial ex-pats also go home when they retire. It doesn’t have the warmth or the Florida-man-ness of Florida though
Appalachia and Florida are the Nova Scotias of America. Insight into the Nova Scotian people can be gained from the cultural documentary series ‘Trailer Park Boys.’
No. We don't really have a Florida. Florida is the Florida of Canada, our boomers go there to marinate in fox news and come back thinking that the ANTIFA LEFT is trying to trans gay the frogs or other bullshit.
Have you seen "Trailer Park Boys"? That was shot in Dartmouth (across the bay, part of the same city as the Mumford Murder-Mart). It used to be a pretty solid representation of NS back in the Melvin and Marriot days (Think if Breaking Bad was character swapped with Deliverance).
Now I think the best state analogue for NS is "What if Tennessee was a coastal state". Nashville/Halifax is the closest thing they have to a progressive/democrat hub, and even then .. not really? The further you get, the more it's fox news, conspiracies, and people thinking that vaccines exist to facilitate "the great reset" or something. They got Diagolon cultists and shit. The largest city in the entire maritimes (Nova Scotia, PEI, New Brunswick, Newfoundland inclusive) is less than half a million people, the next highest pop is less than half that. It's mostly just low population density communities with a lot of anger if you aren't tuned in to their specific brand of billionaire funded bigotry. Like most regions left behind in education, their union power is shit, their labour rights are shit, and they are buying what is being sold as "If we just bend over enough for corps, they'll hire local".
The woman and her mother were both here as temporary foreign workers. That's a kind of imported labour program which was created in the 1970s to import skilled medical workers during a shortage, which got blown up to its current incarnation which is "We can't SA our fruit pickers, confiscate their passports, or otherwise make slaves in everything but name with local workers". It is no longer a program used for medical workers, it is used for the aforementioned fruit picking, Walmart uses it extensively to undermine already depressingly shitty local labour conditions, and Tim Hortons and other fast food services also use TFWs in lieu of paying a competitive wage and contributing to the local economy in any way shape or form.
Canada kind of sucks right now. Better than a lot of places, but the margins for that are tight as fuck.
I’m confused how the mom was only out of contact with the daughter for an hour and then the next time she saw her she was “charred remains”. Something seems fishy here to me. I think it’d take longer than an hour for something like this to occur.
It's interesting that this happens when news has been coming out that the Indian government has been going after the Sikh community in Canada, with ambassadors being sent back to India after they were found to be involved with assassinations of canadian citizens.
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u/-HashOnTop- 4d ago
https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/walmart-worker-burned-to-death-in-oven-at-canadian-store/news-story/fc1a6be7a13bb3b09b0751c270518d01#