DiManno: No more tomorrows for teens in one-sided romance
http://www.thestar.com/news/article...tomorrows-for-teens-in-one-sided-romance?bn=1
When a boy loves a girl: It is the stuff of teenage angst and mooning letters and heartsick ballads.
If unrequited a youthful passion, it feels like tragedy, the end of the world. This intensity of emotions is the bane of adolescence.
Tomorrow seems unbearable.
There are no more tomorrows for Kiranjit Nijjar and Akash Wadhwa.
She was discovered slain on Friday afternoon, dead at 17. He succumbed to severe head injuries Sunday night, dead at 16.
The charges hanging over Wadhwas's head will now never be laid but the homicide investigation continues — a hollow process that can deliver no justice for the victim or requital from the suspect.
It is all so unspeakably sad.
Nijjar's body had been recovered from a ravine near a parkette on Spinnaker Circle in Mississauga only hours after Wadhwa plunged from a nearby highway overpass, struck by at least one vehicle while he lay crumpled on the macadam. For two days, the teen clung to life in hospital. But there was likely never any will to survive in a boy whose psychological trauma preceded ravages of the flesh suffered.
Nijjar is being mourned as a girl allegedly loved to death by a boy for whom she cared deeply — as a friend, with no encouragement for anything more. Cared enough and was concerned enough about Wadhwa's depressive mood, his bleak hints at suicide, that she confided her worries to her parents and a guidance counsellor at the school both teens attended.
She feared the boy would take his own life. She did not fear he might take hers.
“Kiran did everything right, she took all the proper steps,” says her cousin Romi Kler, 20, comforted by a pal Sunday morning as he sat on a children's slide at the parkette.
Since Friday, the 20-year-old University of Waterloo student who grew up as a first-generation Canadian with Kiran — as the victim was known to family and friends — has returned repeatedly to the site, searching for answers, for explanations, embittered by the failure of adults to prevent a disaster that many, at least in retrospect, had seen coming, if not exactly with this dreadful outcome.
“Everybody knew that he was depressed and suicidal,'' continues Kler, referring to Wadhwa, who either fell or jumped onto Highway 401 from the Mavis Rd. overpass, shortly before police located Nijjar's body, apparently knowing just where to search, following a gravel path deep into weeds and shrubs. “When she told her parents, they told her to tell the guidance counsellors at school, which she did. Her parents say she also warned police that he might kill himself. Did they look into that? Did that make a report?”
Though Kler had never met the suspect, he's heard a lot in recent days about Wadhwa and the boy's relationship with his cousin. “He was in love with her but she didn't share his feelings. She told him she just wanted to remain friends. They were very close. But she was more concerned about school and her future. Kiran was a very smart girl, an A student. She could have done so much with her life.”
Kler describes Kiran as “a free spirit, always laughing, never sad.”
“She could brighten everyone's mood. She would never allow an awkward silence around her. Even when she was little, she might cry sometimes, but then soon she'd be smiling again. That's how I remember her — always smiling and laughing.''
About Wadhwa, Kler says: “I heard he was a damaged person, someone who had problems at home and was bullied as a kid. But nothing could excuse doing something like this.''
Classmates at Mississauga Secondary School who knew both Kiran and her gently rebuffed suitor told reporters that the youth had been particularly gloomy over the past month and had written about suicide on his Facebook page in the week leading up Friday's horrific events. That Facebook page has since been removed but those who've seen it were chilled by a posting where the author wrote RIP, followed by his name, then RIP and Kiran's name.
That note was one of two posted on Wadhwa's Facebook page Friday. “What goes around comes around. Karma is the biggest bitch. You should never change on people who love and care for you,” the other note said, in part.
“After killing her, he took the time to update his Facebook page,” accuses Kler.
Kler further claims the youth cleaned up in the washroom of a gas station close to the overpass. “He called police from there and said he'd done it, killed Kiran, and that he was going to kill himself.”
A police source who has seen the preliminary “occurrence report'' told the Star on the weekend that Kiran had been “choked'' to death. The same source said Kiran's killer made a 9-1-1 call afterwards, stating he intended to jump off a bridge.
Peel Regional Police, however, have released no details about the crime. “I can't confirm or deny any of that information,'' Const. Erin Cooper, media relations officer, told the Star Sunday. “Even if those details were correct, we wouldn't release them so as not to compromise the investigation.''
Because of his age, Wadhwa's name could not be made public while he was alive, under provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. Charges had been pending.
At the makeshift shrine to Kiran, a photograph of the lovely teenager, wearing her prom dress, has been wrapped around the tree's slender trunk. A long note affixed beneath it reads: “Dear Kirin: We still remember the day we first met you and your smiling face. It seems like just yesterday. You were an amazing girl with the biggest most beautiful smile in the world. Every time I saw your bright smiling face in the hall, I couldn't help but smile. You were a beautiful girl with a very kind, loving soul & you will NEVER be forgotten. We all love you & miss you so much. RIP Kirin, gone too soon.''
Friends and classmates kept up a constant pilgrimage to the site.
“You can't trust anyone, even your own friends,'' said Paramjit Sandhu, whose daughter was friends with Kiran. He'd driven to the memorial with his wife and daughter to pay their respects. Walking away, the daughter's eyes pooled with tears as she turned her face into the shoulder of her mother's blue sari.
“She's like our daughter,'' said Sandhu's wife about Kiran — same age as her daughter. She said the shock of it all hit her when she saw Kiran's face on the internet.
The daughter and Kiran often ate lunch in the park where the body was found. Kids from two nearby schools routinely hang there. Sandhu's daughter wants people to know that Kiran was an “outgoing person who got along with everyone.”
At Kiran's home on Solidarity Court — part of a tidy, house-proud suburban enclave — a dozen vehicles crammed the driveway and parked on the curb, with kinfolk and friends coming to console her distraught parents and older brother. The family, Sikhs, hail from the Punjab although Kiran was born here. A family member who answered the door politely declined to be interviewed by the Star at this time. “We don't know anything for certain yet.”
A vigil at the park had been planned for later in the evening. Upwards of a hundred mourners had gathered by 6 p.m.
Though her family isn't talking, Kiran's friends have set up an online memorial site where those who knew her — and many who didn't — have left messages.
“She was always the one girl who you would see smiling no matter what. When you had a second to talk to her … with in that second she would make you smile and laugh,” one girl wrote.
“Kiran was a well-liked grade 12 honour student who excelled in sciences and math, and her death is deeply felt by everyone at our school,” wrote Mississauga Secondary School principal Judith Beriault in a note to family and students.
Included in the note were nine points on how to deal with grief and trauma. The school board's critical incident response team will be at the school Monday, along with guidance counsellors to provide comforting for those who need it.
Young people, teenagers, are amazingly resilient.
They'll more likely lean on each other, coming to terms with violent death and loss. It's a quickened growing up.
The shame of it is that a kind girl couldn't save a disturbed boy, or herself, from the turbulence of teenage love and double-tragedy.