Survivor of Caledon shooting that killed both her parents says brother is 'only will to live'

WARNING: This story contains details of gun violence.

From the hospital room where she's spent months now recovering after being shot 13 times and nearly dying, Jaspreet Kaur Sidhu recalls the night her parents were killed.

On Nov. 20, 2023, Sidhu, 28, says a man broke into her family's Caledon, Ont., rental home and started shooting. Her father was pronounced dead at the scene, while her mother died later in hospital.

"My father was shot in front of me. I heard my mother's last screams. After that there was complete silence. Only the noises of gunshots," Sidhu told CBC Toronto in an interview from the hospital where she's recovering. 

She was shot repeatedly from her shoulder down to her legs and underwent an 18-hour surgery to remove bullets from her left arm, stomach and right leg. Her situation was critical enough that Sidhu says her brother kept her parents' deaths a secret until December, when a hospital social worker accidentally informed her. 

"I didn't speak for the whole day, the whole night. I was just lying like this. I had no emotions," Sidhu said. "I was numb."

Until that moment, Sidhu — who couldn't speak because bullets hit her throat and stomach — said she'd been praying and hoping for her parents to survive. 

Sidhu says she thanks God for the "miracle" of her own survival, even though her life has been turned upside down. 

She has to learn how to sit, stand and walk again. She says some days feel manageable, while others are filled with pain, medication and panic attacks.

With tears in her eyes, Sidhu says she remembers being in her room on the first floor of the Mayfield Road home she rented with her younger brother, Gurdit.

She had been living there with Gurdit since August 2022. Last September, their parents came from India for a months-long visit, and Sidhu says she was enjoying the time with them.  Her mother, Harbhajan Sidhu, was 57 years old, as was her father, Jagtar Sidhu.

She told CBC Toronto that her father was a "saint" and her mother was a kind woman who fed everyone who came to visit and treated her children's "friends like [her] own sons and daughters."

Two months into her parents extended visit, Sidhu says a man burst into her home and started shooting. She says she was unconscious for some time, but as soon as she regained consciousness she called 911. 

"I kept saying 'gunshots' … 'whole family was shot,'" she recounted.