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Hamilton police charge man with murder in shooting of Indian student
Twenty-one-year-old Harsimrat Randhawa was killed by a stray bullet while waiting at a bus stop in April.
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Pranavi Sharma - Fri, 08, Aug 2025
- 01:56 EDT
- 7
Harsimrat Randhawa / Hamilton Police Service
Hamilton police have arrested and charged a man with first-degree murder in the shooting of 21-year-old Indian student Harsimrat Randhawa, CBC reported.
Randhawa, an international student in her second year of occupational physiotherapy at Mohawk College, was struck by a stray bullet on Apr.17 while standing near a bus stop at Upper James Street and South Bend Road. She had just left a local gym and was waiting to cross the street when she was hit. She died in hospital of her injuries.
ALSO READ: Indian student killed by stray bullet in Canada
According to CBC, Acting Detective Sergeant Daryl Reid said that 32-year-old Jerdaine Foster was arrested in Niagara Falls, Ontario, on Aug.5. He faces one count of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder.
“Harsimrat was an innocent bystander,” Reid said. “She was simply trying to make her way home from a local gym when she was struck and killed.”
Reid said that at least seven people in four cars were involved in a dispute before the shooting. No other arrests have been made, and the nature of the dispute has not been disclosed. “The investigation is still ongoing, and we will do everything in our power to identify, locate and arrest all these people that are involved in this death,” he said.
Foster, who has ties to Hamilton, Halton, and Niagara regions, was known to police and had been living in short-term rentals, Reid said. Police believe at least two guns were involved, with shots fired between vehicles.
Hamilton Police Chief Frank Bergen said that Randhawa’s death was the result of “a senseless act of gun violence,” linking it to another fatal shooting in July in which 26-year-old Belinda Sarkodie was killed while waiting at a bus stop. In that case, police issued a warrant for a 17-year-old suspect, but no arrest has been announced. Bergen described both shootings as “selfish, dangerous and the byproduct of criminal entitlement.”
Bergen said the investigation leading to Foster’s arrest took five months and was “a much welcome outcome for our grieving communities.”
At a vigil held on Apr. 23 at Mohawk College, Randhawa’s professor Micheline Lancia described her as “a very kind soul” and “a beautiful health-care worker” in the making. “It’s very, very overwhelming to see a student who was doing so well, gentle, respectful, a little bit timid — it’s a loss to everybody,” she said, according to CBC.
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