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Rupi Badh should be planning her wedding. Instead she's planning her parents' funeral.
"This is murder. They killed my parents," Rupi sobbed yesterday in her parents' front yard, her fiancé soothingly patting her head.
"It was a happy occasion and the worst day of my life. I have such mixed emotions about that day."
Surrounded by family, Rupi Badh wipes tears from her eyes as she recounts the street-race crash that killed her parents.
Wayne Leidenfrost - The Province
The 27-year-old nurse was driving her sister and parents home from her engagement party early Saturday when her car was rear-ended, sending it into a telephone pole.
Her mother, Bakhshish, and her father, Dilbag, both 62, were in the back seat of the four-door BMW sedan, bleeding profusely. Her sister Varinder, 31, was in the front seat with a broken jaw and pelvis, and massive internal injuries.
Only the two sisters made it out alive. Now Rupi and her siblings are appealing to the hit-and-run driver to come forward.
"You guys are cowards. You have taken two lives," said son Raminder, 39, as family gathered at their parents' Surrey home to mourn. "This was their time to take it easy, to enjoy their grandchildren and enjoy their lives."
"It's senseless, so senseless. Losing one parent is enough, but two is just devastating," sister Jatinder, 37, said.
Rupi said she has no doubt the two cars behind her were street racing. She and her siblings said stricter laws and penalties -- including murder charges -- would prevent this from happening again.
"There were two cars going side-by-side and they're going at it. They know the consequences," Raminder said.
"In my opinion, it was speed racing and a hit-and-run. It was a loaded weapon. The gun went off and it took two lives but it took more than two lives with it."
Police say speed was a factor. Rupi's BMW was travelling north on 128th Street in Surrey when it was rear-ended by a speeding white Acura TL. The Acura then sideswiped a northbound Camaro.
RCMP say two men fled the overturned Acura. Police would not say if the car was stolen.
The family is hoping the men quickly turn themselves in.
"Right now it's our parents, but in the future it might be yours," Raminder said.
"She didn't deserve to die like this," Rupi said as she stared at the blood-stained bracelet and ring her mother was wearing that night.
"She always said. 'When I die, I want to die right away,' and I feel like she suffered because she had a pulse and she was bleeding everywhere."
Rupi was taken to Surrey Memorial Hospital with a concussion, bumps and bruises. Her sister, Varinder, is in Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, under the impression that her parents are in the same hospital, recovering. She's too heavily sedated and suffering to know the truth, Raminder said.
"They're lying in the same hospital with her, but they're lying in the freezer," Raminder said.
kmercer@png.canwest.com
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