INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Amarjit Sekhon, a 48-year-old mother of two, was the breadwinner of her family and one of many members of the narrow-knit Sikh community in Indianapolis who worked at a FedEx warehouse southwest of the city.
His death Thursday night in a mass shooting that killed seven other FedEx employees – four of them Sikhs – has stunned the community and mourned his brother-in-law, Kuldip Sekhon, on Saturday. .
She said her sister-in-law began working at the FedEx facility in November (after previously working at a bakery) and that she was a dedicated worker whose husband was disabled.
“It was a narcotic job, I was always working, working. I would never stop unless I felt really bad,” he said.
In addition to Sekhon, the Marion County Forensic Office identified the dead Friday at the end of: 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 19-year-old Brandon Scott Hole apparently started randomly firing at people in the parking lot of the FedEx facility, killing four of them, before entering the building. fatally shooting four more people and then turning the gun on himself.
It was unclear whether the Sikhs were targets of the shooting. Hole’s motives remained unclear Saturday.
The killings marked the last of a series of recent mass shootings across the country and the third mass shooting this year in Indianapolis.
Deputy Chief of Police Craig McCartt said Hole was a former FedEx employee and last worked for the company in 2020. Deputy Chief of Police said he did not know why Hole left the job or whether he had ties to the workers of the facility.
About 90 percent of 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, west of Indianapolis and south of the city.
Kuldip Sekhon said his family lost another relative during the shooting: Kaur, who was his son’s mother-in-law. He said both Kaur and Amarjit Sekhon began work on the FedEx facility at the same time last November.
“They were both together to work” when the shooting occurred, he said.
Komal Chohan, who said Amarjeet Johal was her grandmother, said in a statement issued by the Sikh Coalition that members of her family, including several working at the FedEx warehouse, are “traumatized” by the killings.
“My dwarf, my family and our families should not feel insecure at work, in their place of worship or anywhere else. Enough is enough, our community has suffered enough trauma,” he said. he 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 settling in Indiana more than 50 years ago and opened their first house of worship, known as the gurdwara, in 1999.
The attack was again for the Asian American community a month after the deaths of six people of Asian descent in a mass shooting in the Atlanta area and amid ongoing attacks on Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic.
Filming comes the week that Sikhs celebrate Vaisakhi, an important festive festival that, among other things, marks the date on which Sikhism was born as a collective faith.
“While we still don’t know the motive for the shooter, he went to a facility known to be heavily populated by Sikh employees, and the attack is traumatic for our community as we continue to face violence without sense, ”said Satjeet Kaur, the Sikh. Coalition Executive Director.
The coalition says about 500,000 Sikhs live in the United States. Many practicing Sikhs are visually distinguished by their articles of faith, which include uncut hair and turban.
The shooting is the deadliest incident of mass violence in the U.S. Sikh community since 2012, when a white supremacist burst into a Wisconsin Sikh temple and shot dead ten people, killing six. A seventh died in 2020 due to complications from his injuries. That gunman committed suicide during a shootout with police.
Paul Keenan, a special agent in charge of the FBI office in Indianapolis, said Friday that officers interrogated Hole last year after his mother called police to say his son could commit suicide with a police. He said the FBI was called after items were found in Hole’s room, but did not detail what they were. He said officers found no evidence of the crime and did not identify Hole as an advocate of a racially motivated ideology.
A police report obtained by The Associated Press shows that officers confiscated a bomb shotgun from Hole’s home after answering his mother’s call. Keenan said the gun never came back.
Indianapolis police said Friday that Hole opened fire with a rifle.
Samaria Blackwell, of Indianapolis, was a football and basketball player who last year graduated from Indy Genesis, a Christian competition sports organization for home schooled students. Her teammates posted on Facebook that Blackwell “always smiled and made jokes. She was so loving, silly, encouraging and supportive.” Family friends have organized a fundraiser for the Blackwell family to help with funeral expenses.
Several dozen people gathered Saturday afternoon at Olivet Missionary Baptist Church, on the west side of the city, to mourn and call for action.
“The system failed our state the other night,” said Cathy Weinmann, a Moms Demand Action volunteer. “This young man should never have had access to a firearm … we will not accept it and demand better than that for our community.”