New details emerge following crash on Highway 401 that killed five students
The Brampton funeral director leading the effort to get the bodies of five men killed in a crash on Highway 401 back to India says the process may take a month or more.
The college where three of the deceased were students has offered to pay to return the men's bodies and cover the cost of their funerals.
Inderjit Bal, President of the Brampton Crematorium and Visitation Centre, says all the men's families can do for now is wait in their "tears and sorrow."
Bal is shepherding friends of the deceased close to home through their grief.
"(It's their) first time in Canada, homesickness. A lot of pressure with studying, working, just paying their fees, loneliness," Bal says.
"Emotionally, I'll say they were broken."
Twenty-three-year-old Pawan Kumar moved to Canada from Lilas, a village of 2,600 in the state of Haryana two years ago.
Montreal's Canada College confirms three of its students were killed and a fourth was hospitalized following the crash.
Ontario Provincial Police say eight people had been riding in a van before it was hit by a tractor trailer along Highway 401 at 3:45 a.m. Saturday.
OPP Const. Maggie Pickett says just before the collision, the van stopped in a live lane of the highway between Belleville and Trenton and one person got out.
Pickett could not say why the van had stopped.
The driver of the truck and the person who got out of the van were not hurt. Five men were killed and two other people were seriously injured.
Jaspinder Singh, 21, Karanpal Singh, 22, Mohit Chouhan, 23, Pawan Kumar, 23, and Harpreet Singh, 24, were pronounced dead at the scene.
Canada College has set up a makeshift memorial to the men who died.
John-David Couturier with Canada College says Chouhan, Kumar, and Karanpal Singh had been studying business administration three days a week.
He says the school's international students are a tight community and that it isn't uncommon for them to live well outside Montreal, opening job opportunities where they do not need to speak French.
Couturier says the school will pay an estimated $15,000 each to return their students to their families in India.
"They work so hard to save the money to be able to send their child to study here in Canada, hoping for them to have a better life," Couturier says.
Canada College is consulting with students to determine what kind of supports they need.
Bal says there will be a memorial service for the five men the night before their bodies are flown back to India.
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