Gunman Had History Of Violence Estranged Wife Had Complained To Police In Two Cities

A man who gunned down nine people and shot himself had a deliberate plan to exact revenge on his estranged wife’s family, but he didn’t initially plan to kill himself, police said.

Sgt. Doug Hartl of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said gunman Mark Chahal drove to nearby Kelowna from the Vancouver area and rented a van - suggesting he intended to make an escape.

“It would be easy to assume this was a planned and deliberate incident, not something on the spur of the moment,” Hartl said Saturday.

“In a murder-suicide it really is irrelevant whether or not you’re using your own car. We think his decision to commit suicide is a result of what occurred in the house, maybe because he felt his identity would be known.”

The gunman had no criminal record and the weapons were all registered to him.

However, he had a history of violence with his estranged wife and had been threatening her since their separation in January 1995. The couple had lived in the Vancouver area.

The estranged wife, Rajwar Kaur Gakhal, had complained to Vancouver area police about his behavior. When she moved back to Vernon to be with her parents, she again complained about her estranged husband to police there.

The Okanagan Valley city was struggling to bear up after the mass killing. Friends and relatives continued to arrive for what was supposed to be a joyous wedding celebration Saturday.

The bride-to-be, Balwinder Kaur Gakhal, 24, was killed in Friday’s shooting. Her sister, the estranged wife, Rajwar Kaur Gakhal, 26, also died.

Gurmail Kaur Saran, 60, and 6-year-old Justine Kaur Saran were wounded but are expected to recover. Two other children saw the horror but were unharmed.

Hartl said it appears Chahal intended to spare all the children when he marched up to a middle-class home with a handgun in each hand and began firing.

“We feel that the shot that went through the legs of Justine was a stray shot, that may have occurred while she was running out of the room,” he said.

“He had the chance to kill all three kids and he chose not to.”

Police believe Chahal was only in the residence for three to four minutes, though the dead all had multiple gunshot wounds from a .40-caliber semi-automatic handgun and a .38-caliber revolver.

Police at the scene found 28 spent revolver casings and two empty semi-automatic gun clips, which had each contained 10 shots.

A 12-gauge shotgun, not used, was found loaded in his rented van.

People trooped past the house Saturday, where blood had dried on the driveway and windows were shot out. Some wanted to satisfy their curiosity while others wept and laid flowers.

Many residents made white wreaths to hang on their doors in memory of the dead.

The coroner’s office was performing autopsies and police said the bodies won’t be released for burial until Monday.

It is the second-worst murder-suicide in Canadian history, behind the 1989 Montreal massacre when Marc Lepine killed 14 women and then shot himself.

Trauma teams worked with relatives and members of Vernon’s Sikh community. Some family members were taken through the scene as part of the grieving process. They appeared calm and said nothing.

“I think what’s important for us to understand is that one of the symptoms we go through in the shock stage is numbness,” explained Richard Wilford, an RCMP victims’ assistance co-ordinator. “We don’t know how to react. Therefore we have no reaction at all.”

The groom was en route to Vernon for the wedding when he got word of the tragedy. His whereabouts were not immediately known.

The dead included the family patriarch, owner of the house, his wife, their five grown daughters, a son and a son-in-law. Six died at the scene and three later succumbed to their wounds. Some were from the Vancouver area.

The gunman was found in a motel shortly after the killings, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police said he left a short suicide note apologizing for his actions.

The killings, on a quiet Good Friday and the day before the important Sikh holy day of Vaisakhi, sent Vernon’s close-knit, 150-family Sikh community into shock.

“I think this is the biggest tragedy in the history of the Sikh community here,” said Ajit Sidhu, a member of the Sikh Temple committee.