INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – The tight-knit Sikh community in Indianapolis mourned Saturday when members learned that four Sikhs were among the eight killed in the mass shooting at a FedEx warehouse.
The Marion County Coroner’s office identified the dead late Friday as Matthew R. Alexander, 32; Samaria Blackwell, 19; Amarjeet Johal, 66; Jaswinder Kaur, 64; Jaswinder Singh, 68; Amarjit Sekhon, 48; Karli Smith, 19; and John Weisert, 74.
Deputy Police Chief Craig McCartt said that Hole apparently started shooting randomly at people in the FedEx facility parking lot, 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.
Police Chief Randal Taylor noted that a “significant” number of employees at the FedEx facility are members of the Sikh community. Some members gathered at a local hotel on Friday looking for information about family and friends.
“I have several family members who work in the facility in question and are traumatized,” said Komal Chohan, who said Amarjeet Johal was her grandmother, in a statement from the Sikh Coalition. “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. ”
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.
Hole’s motives remained unclear on Saturday.
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,” said Satjeet Kaur, the Sikh. Coalition’s Executive Director. “Further traumatization is the reality that many of these community members, such as Sikhs we have worked with in the past, will eventually have to return to where their lives were almost taken from them.”
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 in 2020 of complications from the injuries he sustained during the incident. 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 “ commit suicide by a 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.
When the names were released, family and friends of the victims began posting memories on social media.
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 “always smiled and joked. She was so loving, crazy, encouraging and supportive. Family friends have organized a fundraiser for the Blackwell family to help with funeral expenses.
Smith, the youngest of the victims, had last contact with her family shortly before 11 p.m. on Thursday, family members said in social media posts late Friday. Dominique Troutman, Smith’s sister, waited hours at the Holiday Inn for an update on her sister. Words can’t even explain how I feel. … I’m so hurt, ”said Troutman in a Facebook post Friday night.
Weisert had worked as a bag handler at FedEx for four years, his wife Carol told WISH-TV. The couple had been married for almost 50 years.
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 ties to the workers at the facility. He said the police have not yet discovered a motive for the shooting.
The murders were the latest in a series of recent mass shootings across the country and the third mass shooting this year in Indianapolis. Five people, including a pregnant woman, were shot in the city in January and a man was accused of murdering three adults and a child before kidnapping his daughter during a row in a house in March. In other states, eight people were shot last month at massage companies in the Atlanta area, and 10 died in gunfire at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.
Associated Press reporters Michael Balsamo and Eric Tucker in Washington and Pat Eaton-Robb in Connecticut contributed to this report. Casey Smith is a corps member of the Associated Press / Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a national nonprofit service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on hidden issues.