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Mother Of Killer Sorry !

Jan 6, 2005
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Metro-Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Mother of killer feels sorry
'It's not our fault'

Graeme Hamilton - National Post (Canada)
Saturday, September 16, 2006

Parvinder Sandhu knew her son loved his semi-automatic rifle, but she figured his trips to the shooting range were just a hobby. She had noticed that he had been feeling down recently but thought his spirits would lift when he found a job.

Then, late Wednesday, she learned her first-born, Kimveer Gill, the 25-year-old who still slept in the same bedroom he occupied as a child and ate his mother's cooking, was the gunman behind that afternoon's murderous rampage at Dawson College (Montreal, Quebec)

"He was a little bit sad this year, but we never, never thought that this could happen," Ms. Sandhu told the National Post yesterday. "The person who would never hit or hurt -- even with words -- someone, how could he do such a big thing? This is the shock we have now. It is out of the question, what he did."

Ms. Sandhu broke her silence because she wanted to send a message to her son's victims, in particular the family of Anastasia DeSousa, the 18-year-old who was killed. Ms. DeSousa was shot at least nine times.
"The girl, I feel so sorry for her parents. If you want to give them the message, tell them that the parents are feeling very, very sad and very, very mad about what happened there, and we never expected that," Gill's mother said.
"My sympathy is with them, and they should forgive us because it's not our fault. We did not raise him that way."

Friends of Gill say he grew up in a supportive household, with his parents -- immigrants from India -- and his younger twin brothers.

They remembered Ms. Sandhu fretting about her son, and as recently as this year seeking the help of one of his high school friends to help find Gill a job.

"No mother would raise her kids to be a bad person or something. Everything was going good," she said. She said he had never received medical care for psychological problems.

Now the family is racked by grief and guilt, wondering why they did not sense a dangerous change in Gill. "If we knew that something was going on, we would have done something," she said. "My husband is also saying the same thing: 'Oh God, if I knew a little bit that recently his mind is changing to other directions, we would have done something. We would have saved many children from getting hurt in Dawson College.' "

Gill did not hide his Beretta carbine semi-automatic rifle. "He showed the gun to everybody, to his friends, to us," she said. It was a friend who took the photos of him wielding the rifle in front of the family fireplace, which Gill posted on the Internet.

She said she did not find anything unusual in his interest in firearms. "It was a sport. It was a hobby for him," she said. "He used to go and practice, then come back home, put the gun away. It was not something hidden or something illegal or that he was a bad boy." She said she was unaware he had also bought the two handguns he had with him on Wednesday.

She knew he spent a lot of time on the computer in his bedroom but had no idea he was filling an online journal with hate-filled rants and violent fantasies. "We found there was a little change because he was a little quieter, but he still was normal at home, living with us upstairs, [sleeping] in his bedroom. It's not that he was alone in the basement or anything," she said.
When he left the house on Wednesday morning, she thought he was heading out looking for work. He had landed a good job at a Montreal electronics firm, Marconi Co., after dropping out of college in 1999, but was laid off two years later when the company downsized.

"I met his boss there and he said, 'You should be a proud mother of your son. We are very much happy with him,' " she recalled. He had held other jobs since but had not been working this year.
On Thursday, Ms. Sandhu said, she received a telephone call from a company where Gill had applied for work. "When they said, 'Can we speak to him? We have a job for him,' I couldn't believe it. I just said, 'No you can't. He's no more.' "

ghamilton@nationalpost.com

© National Post 2006​
 

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