Woman Faces Trial on Attempted Drowning

Glancing nervously at their weeping mother, the son and daughter of Narinder Virk described for a judge Thursday how she led them to a darkened harbor channel last month and pushed them off a dock.

Both said their mother then held them under water until they couldn’t breathe.

“My mom was drowning us,” testified 9-year-old Sonny Virk, who recalled how he fought to get his head above water. “She was pushing us down.”

Sonny and his 6-year-old sister, Harpreet, were the first witnesses to take the stand at their mother’s preliminary hearing.

Their testimony provided sufficient evidence for Ventura County Superior Court Judge Vincent J. O’Neill Jr. to order Virk to stand trial on two counts of attempted murder.

The judge also rejected a defense request to reduce bail, saying the evidence strongly suggests the 39-year-old Port Hueneme woman intentionally tried to drown her children in a residential area near Channel Islands Harbor.

Virk’s supporters were disappointed with the decision. They believe she is a battered wife who momentarily lost her mind when her husband flew to India to seek a divorce.

“She was a confused woman,” Amarjit S. Marwah, a Sikh community leader and dentist in Los Angeles, said outside the courtroom. “I don’t think she had plans to drown herself or her children.”

During Thursday’s preliminary hearing, Virk, a slight woman with long dark hair, sobbed uncontrollably as her children were brought into court.

Harpreet was the first to take the stand.

Wearing jeans and a white blouse with hair braided into pigtails, the 6-year-old walked past her mother and raised her arm to take the oath.

Harpreet, a student at Christa McAuliffe School in Oxnard, told the judge her favorite subject is drawing. She answered a few other mild questions. Then, under questioning by Deputy Dist. Atty. Dee Corona, the girl described what happened at the harbor on Jan. 12.

Harpreet testified her mother had dressed her in brown pants and a shirt, telling her they were “going to go to the beach to wash our faces.”

After her brother put on a jacket, they left the house and walked to the nearby harbor--leaving a bird cage covered with a blanket on a neighbor’s step.

At the dock, Harpreet said, they sat on the edge of a boat ramp with their feet almost touching the water.

“I tell her I didn’t want to go in the water because I didn’t know what to do,” she said, referring to the fact that she couldn’t swim.

Harpreet said her mother didn’t say anything in response, but pushed her and her brother in the water and jumped in with them.

“I was trying to get up, but I couldn’t because I didn’t know how to swim,” she testified. “She was pushing me under the water.”

But Harpreet told a somewhat different story on cross-examination.

She said there may have been a man on the dock who pushed her in--a man whose fingernails were shorter than her mother’s and who previously had been watching TV at his house near the dock.

Harpreet acknowledged she had never told the story to police, which prompted Corona to ask whether the girl was lying.

“Is it hard for you to say your mom is the one who pushed you in the water?” the prosecutor asked.

“Yeah,” Harpreet said.

“Is that because that’s what happened?” Corona said.

“Yeah,” Harpreet responded.

The girl’s brother told the judge that his mother was the one who pushed them in the water.

Sonny said he was able to paddle away from his mother and call for help. A few minutes later, he said, a man pulled them back onto the dock.

Brian Wiggins, a harbor resident and former lifeguard who rescued the children, later testified that Harpreet was unconscious and not breathing when he pulled her “lifeless” body from the water.

Wiggins said Sonny--whose cries had awakened him--was stunned and shaken by the incident. Wiggins said the defendant never said a word--just moaned in pain on the dock.

During his testimony, Sonny, dressed in a gray jacket and tie, fidgeted and looked anxiously at his mother, who heard the children’s testimony through a Punjabi interpreter. He clearly struggled with the concept that she apparently had tried to keep him from breathing.

“It couldn’t have been my mom,” he said at one point, “because she wouldn’t do a thing like that.”

The children are living in Port Hueneme with their father, Santokh Virk, who owns a liquor store and works as a part-time delivery driver for The Times.

Virk remains held in County Jail in lieu of $500,000 bail. A trial-setting hearing and arraignment on the charges are scheduled for March 2.