The fatal shooting of an Edmonton security guard last week is leading some to question the circumstances that put him in harm’s way.
Twenty-year-old Harshandeep Singh was gunned down early Friday morning in an apartment block on 107 Avenue, just north of Downtown Edmonton. Officers responding to reports of gunfire in the building found the young international student in a stairwell, wounded and unresponsive. He died in hospital.
The pair accused of killing Singh — Evan Rain and Judith Saulteaux — were arrested over the weekend and charged with first-degree murder. Outrage grew after leaked surveillance video purporting to show the killing was posted online.
Richard LaForge “forced” himself to watch the video over the weekend to understand Singh’s final moments.
LaForge, a career security professional who is chairman of ASIS chapter 156, an international organization for security professionals, wondered why Singh was tasked with patrolling an apartment with a tough reputation while alone.
“I think it comes down to, ‘Why is the guard in that situation?’” LaForge said. “Why is he working alone? Why is it OK that they be deployed in that type of situation?”
“We need to make sure people are going to work safely,” he added. “This poor kid should never have been put in that situation.”
A family representative said Singh had been on the job for just three days.
‘Dreams for a better life’
Singh — a brother and his parents’ only son — was enrolled in the business administration program at NorQuest College A family spokesperson said he came to Canada a year and a half ago “full of dreams for a better life and opportunities to support his family back in India.” An online fundraiser to bring his body home had raised more than $120,000 as of press time.
National Security Guard Protection Services, an Edmonton-based security firm, said in a Facebook post that Singh was an employee. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
Jagdeep Singh, 21, was friends with Singh. They met in a strategic management class at Norquest.
“He was kind, he was so helpful,” Jagdeep Singh said during a break in the student centre lounge. “He was so worried about his studies, because of the language barrier, English was his third language.”
Singh has watched the video, which shows a suspect yelling as he prodded a man who appears to be Harshandeep Singh into the stairwell, sending him stumbling down the stairs before firing.
“He surrendered, like in front of them, yeah? But they shot him,” Jagdeep Singh said.
“His family was so shocked, they were not processing it. He was the only boy child. I can feel for what his family is suffering. What were his goals here? It just vanished. Everything is vanished,” he said.
Rain and Saulteaux, both 30, are due in court Wednesday for a bail hearing. An Edmonton police spokesperson said they will not be releasing details about their backgrounds “at this time.” Court records were not immediately available Monday.
Surge in demand
Harshandeep Singh’s death is drawing attention to the risks of security work, demand for which has surged in the wake of the pandemic. In 2024, the Alberta government issued or renewed 19,270 licences under the Security Services and Investigators Act, up from 14,584 in 2023 and 13,298 the year prior.
Daniel Jones, chairman of the justice studies department at NorQuest, attributed local demand to the post-COVID economic downturn, as well as the “dispersal of the unhoused” population around the city. Homeless people “don’t necessarily bring crime with them,” he said, but security guards are often tasked with removing them from properties for loitering.
A former Edmonton Police Service officer who worked the 107 Avenue beat and knows the building where Singh was killed, Jones was still shocked watching the video of the homicide. “It didn’t feel real to me,” he said.
LaForge said like Singh, many guards are newcomers to Canada. They often face language barriers, an unfamiliar climate and a limited ability to say “no” to unsafe work.
Smaller security companies aren’t often in a position to turn down contracts either, LaForge said.
“A company working any location like (the apartment where Singh was killed), they’re in a tough spot,” he said. “Maybe they do go to the client and say, ‘Hey, we need to put two people here.’ And the client goes, ‘That’s great. I’m not paying for the second one.’”
“It would be wonderful if the industry could band together as a whole and say, ‘We’re all going to refuse to take jobs like this,’” LaForge said. “That won’t happen. It would be wonderful if clients would be really honest in their security budgets in order for things to be as safe as possible — try to avoid work-alone wherever possible, certainly in nighttime hours.”
LaForge urged the Alberta government to overhaul its security industry legislation, including improving training and protection for guards. “Those haven’t been updated in a long time — what the minimum requirements are. A 40-hour course is not cutting it.”
He stressed, however, that even a police officer, with their training and weapons, would have been in grave danger in Singh’s situation. Jones questioned whether a second guard would have made a difference.
Singh is at least the second security guard to die on duty in Edmonton this year. In March, a 58-year-old GardaWorld employee died after going into “medical distress” following an “altercation” with a man in the Downtown HSBC Place parkade. That same month, three guards at the Stanley A. Milner suffered minor injuries while trying to remove a man with a knife.
The GardaWorld guard’s death was initially deemed suspicious, though an autopsy ultimately ruled out homicide as the manner of death. The other man involved in the altercation, Douglas John Wentworth, was charged with mischief under $5,000, possession of break-in instruments and failure to comply with a probation order. Court records show he was accused of smashing the window of a vehicle while carrying a screwdriver and box cutters. He was sentenced on Sept. 6 to 270 days in jail and released on time served.
Singh’s death follows that of another young Sikh man killed while working in central Edmonton. Jashandeep Singh Maan, 22, was stabbed while working in a parkade at Commerce Place in September. Police said the stabbing — allegedly by a delivery van driver Maan had never met, has since been charged with second-degree murder — appears to have been random.
— with files from Jackie Carmichael, The Canadian Press
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