TORONTO — It’s been more than a month since his death and the family of 22-year-old Manpreet Kanhaiya is still looking for answers.
On Sept. 23, the Brampton native had moved to Poland to attend medical school at the Medial University of Lodz. A week later he died after falling out of his fourth floor apartment building.
Jaswinder Kankaiya, Manpreet’s father, told Global News Manpreet was happy and excited to be in Poland.
Kanhaiya said his son was attending school there to become a dentist, so for him to suddenly die does not make sense.
“Something went wrong, terribly wrong with him because he was looking forward to a new future and he was very happy to be a dentist,” he said.
“He had big plans. He had made plans with his Mother to open a dental office. He even said to us next time you come, bring my younger brother with you and we can go visit a neighboring country.
“He was planning all of that … it is like the earth has moved beneath our feet.”
According to autopsy reports there were no drugs or alcohol found in Manpreet’s system.
But his family said investigators in Poland told them, based on the security footage from cameras in the apartment hallway around 2 a.m. on Sept. 29, Manpreet was acting like he was agitated and out of control — indicating he may have taken a legal high also known as a designer drug.
Jaswinder said his son had never taken drugs and that something terrible must have happened.
Kanhaiya said he wants to see the security footage and he wants investigators to look at the window his son fell out of to determine if it was safe.
In addition, Kanhaiya wants to know why his son was in the hallway at 2 a.m., and if he was indeed agitated or acting erratically, why no one tried to help him.
“If the guy was in such a terrible state and and physically agitated, not able to be controlled and he was left to go into his room which was not safe and he jumped from there?” he said.
“A lot of questions, a lot of questions.”
The family is working with authorities in Poland, but they said it could take months before any new information surfaces.
To help speed things up they are looking to hire a private investigator in Poland who can help determine what happened. However, they first need to save up enough money to do so.
To help the family out, an online fundraising campaign has been created and Jaswinder Kanhaiya said he is grateful for all the support the community is giving him.
But he said the stress of his son’s death is weighing heavily on the family.
“We are a complete mess,” Jaswinder said.
“I wake up in the night I cry. I take a bath I cry.”
Families dealing with the loss of a loved one who have died while abroad is more common than one would think.
According to Foreign Affairs, in 2014 1,335 Canadian died abroad, most of which were due to natural causes.
But for those families dealing with authorities in foreign countries, finding answers can be very frustrating.
The Kanhaiya family said they have run into many roadblocks, language being one of them.
READ MORE: What to do if a family member dies overseas
They said as a result the information they have been able to gather is very little and often confusing.
Manpreet’s parents said for any family looking to send their child abroad to study,their advice to them is to make sure they research the school, the area, and the country to ensure everything is safe.
They said they relied on their son’s desire to study in Poland without doing any background research, a mistake they sadly regret.
Now their focus is to find the truth behind Manpreet’s death and to finally get some closure.
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