Four Sikhs among victims of Indianapolis mass shootings

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Amarjit Sekhon, a 48-year-old mother of two sons, was her family’s breadwinner and one of many members of the tight-knit Sikh community in Indianapolis who worked in a FedEx warehouse on the southwest side of the city.

Her death Thursday night in a mass shooting that killed seven other FedEx employees – four of them Sikhs – has left that community baffled and in mourning, her brother-in-law, Kuldip Sekhon, said Saturday.

He said his sister-in-law started working at the FedEx facility in November – having previously worked at a bakery – and was a dedicated employee whose husband was disabled.

“She was a workaholic, she was always working, working. She would never sit still unless she was feeling really bad,” he said.

In addition to Sekhon, Marion County Coroner’s office identified the dead late on Friday as: Matthew R. Alexander, 32; Samaria Blackwell, 19; Amarjeet Johal, 66; Jasvinder Kaur, 50; Jaswinder Singh, 68; Karli Smith, 19; and John Weisert, 74.

Police said Brandon Scott Hole, 19, apparently started shooting people randomly in the parking lot of the FedEx facility, killing four, before entering the building, fatally shooting four more people and then aiming the gun at himself.

It was not clear whether Sikhs were targeted in the shooting. Hole’s motives remained unclear on Saturday.

The murders were the latest in a series of recent mass shootings across the country and the third mass shooting this year in Indianapolis.

Deputy Police Chief Craig McCartt said Hole was a former FedEx employee and last worked for the company in 2020. The Deputy Police Chief said he did not know why Hole quit the job or if he had links with the workers at the facility.

About 90% of the workers at the facility near Indianapolis International Airport are members of the local Sikh community, Indianapolis Police Chief Randal Taylor said Friday. Many of them live in Hendricks County, just west of Indianapolis, and on the south side of the city.

Kuldip Sekhon said his family lost another relative in the shooting – Kaur, his son’s mother-in-law. He said both Kaur and Amarjit Sekhon started at the FedEx facility at the same time last November.

“They were both there together for work” when the shooting took place, he said.

Komal Chohan, who said Amarjeet Johal was her grandmother, said in a statement from the Sikh Coalition that her relatives, including some who work in the FedEx warehouse, were “traumatized” by the murders.

“My nani, my family and our families should not feel unsafe at work, in their place of worship, or anywhere. Enough is enough – our community has been through enough trauma,” she said in the statement.

According to the coalition, there are between 8,000 and 10,000 Sikh Americans in Indiana. Members of the religion, which began in India in the 15th century, began to settle in Indiana more than 50 years ago, opening their first house of worship known as a gurdwara in 1999.

The attack was another blow to the Asian-American community a month after six people of Asian descent were killed in a mass shooting in the Atlanta area and amid ongoing attacks on Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic.

The shooting comes in the week that Sikhs celebrate Vaisakhi, a major holiday festival that, among other things, marks the date when Sikhism was born as a collective faith.

“While we don’t yet know the shooter’s motive, he targeted a facility known to be densely populated by Sikh employees, and the attack is traumatic for our community as we continue to face senseless violence,” he said. said Satjeet Kaur, the Sikh. Coalition’s Executive Director.

The coalition says there are about 500,000 Sikhs living in the US. Many practicing Sikhs are visually distinguishable by their articles of faith, including the unshaven hair and turban.

The shooting is the deadliest incident of collective violence in the US Sikh community since 2012, when a white supremacist raided a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and killed ten people, killing six. A seventh died of complications from his injuries in 2020. That gunman killed himself in a shootout with the police.

Paul Keenan, special agent in charge of the FBI’s field office in Indianapolis, said on Friday that agents questioned Hole last year after his mother called police to say her son might be “ committing suicide by cop. ” He said the FBI was called after items were found in Hole’s bedroom, but he did not reveal what they were. He said officers found no evidence of a crime and did not identify Hole as a racially motivated ideology.

A police report from The Associated Press found that officers confiscated a pump-action shotgun from Hole’s home after responding to the mother’s call. Keenan said the gun was never returned.

Indianapolis police said Friday that Hole opened fire with a rifle.

Samaria Blackwell of Indianapolis was a soccer and basketball player who graduated last year from Indy Genesis, a Christian league sports organization for homeschool students. Teammates posted on Facebook that Blackwell “was always smiling and joking. She was so loving, wacky, encouraging and supportive.” Family friends have organized a fundraiser for the Blackwell family to help with funeral expenses.

Several dozen people gathered at the Olivet Missionary Baptist Church on the west side of town on Saturday afternoon to mourn and call for action.

“The system recently failed in our state,” said Cathy Weinmann, a volunteer at Moms Demand Action. “That young man should never have had access to a weapon … we will not accept this, and we demand better than this for our community.”

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