Parents 'knew nothing'
Police told them of shooting spree 10 hours later
Son learned about guns during stint with army: Mother
Sep. 16, 2006. 07:04 AM
HUGO MEUNIER
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
LAVAL, QUE.—On Wednesday, Kimveer Gill's parents were watching television, glued to the coverage of the carnage at Dawson College. By that time, their son had killed Anastasia De Sousa and wounded about 20 other people before turning his gun on himself.
But his parents had no inkling of his involvement until the police arrived at their bungalow in Laval at 11:30 p.m., more than 10 hours after the shooting spree.
Their son a killer? They were blown away, crushed.
"My husband cried all night and said, "If I only knew! If I only knew,'" Kimveer Gill's mother, Parvinder Sandhu, said in an interview.
"Tell everyone, it's really hard for the parents. It's the worst thing that can happen. We knew nothing.
"It was a shock, our legs buckled, then they became as hard as rock," she said of hearing the news about her 25-year-old son from police.
She is interviewed in the modest white brick house the family bought when her son was 6.
The curtains are closed. No lights are on. The father, who does not speak to reporters and asks that his first name not be used, is in the kitchen, adjacent to the living room. He makes funeral arrangements for his son. Their other sons, the twins, are up in their bedroom.
There is another room, Kimveer's — his lair where he played on the computer and kept his precious guns. His mother would not allow reporters into the room. But she said Kimveer left no note before he went on his killing spree.
Since the tragedy, the family has been prisoners in the house; they live on meals ordered for them by the police.
She agreed to the interview with La Presse yesterday hoping that it would somehow call off the pack of journalists who have been hounding them, knocking on their door, telephoning and even climbing up and looking at them through the windows.
They try hard to mourn — they have lost a son and become the parents of an assassin. "People forget that; they believe that perhaps we are criminals, too," she says.
She gives some sketchy biographical information: the family arrived in Canada 20 years ago. She worked in a store but quit her job when she got breast cancer. Her husband doesn't work any more, but according to a family friend, he was once a professor at Toronto university; he does not say which one.
She insists her son was not the solitary, taciturn person the media have portrayed.
"He had friends and everything," she said, but adds that he had changed lately.
"Since Christmas, he became more sad, more tranquil. He started to spend more time on his computer, playing video games."
Her son, she says, once suffered from depression, overwhelmed by her illness. He was treated at a local health clinic.
Yes, the parents were aware of the guns. Kimveer showed them his impressive Beretta. He was a member of a gun club in suburban Lachine.
"There was nothing illegal, otherwise we wouldn't have tolerated that." The guns were registered and kept in his room. "He showed us his big gun, the semi-automatic which he used for shooting, but he said it was for sport, for going to the training centre."
His mother insists he learned about guns during a four-week stint of basic training with the Canadian Forces in 1999.
The army denies this. Lieut. Carol Brown, a spokeswoman for the Forces, confirmed Gill did go through four weeks of basic training. But she said he did not carry arms — weapons training and drills take place later in training.
The Forces refuse to confirm his reasons for leaving.
His parents say they now know their son hid many things. They were stupefied to see pictures of him as an avenging angel on a violent goth website.
"Seeing (the pictures), I asked myself how a good boy could become like this. I never knew he went to this site. Perhaps it influenced him," his mother said.
If she and her husband had had the slightest hint of what was going on, they would have intervened. "We would have built a wall in front of him to prevent him from doing that." And if her son had survived? "I would be very angry with him. I would insist they give him the maximum penalty. No one deserves what just happened. I feel terrible when I see the other parents suffering," she said.
On saying that, her eyes fill with tears.
La Presse, with files from Sébastien Rodrigue
