Four Sikhs among victims of Indianapolis mass shooting

Four members of Indianapolis’ tight knit Sikh community were among eight people killed in a mass shooting at a FedEx warehouse on Thursday.

Amarjit Sekhon was one of the victims - a mother of two sons - who began working at the FedEx facility in November, after previously working at a bakery, and was a dedicated worker whose husband was disabled.

“She was a workaholic, she always was working, working,” her brother-in-law Kuldip Sekhon, said on Saturday.

“She would never sit still ... the other day she had the (Covid) shot and she was really sick, but she still went to work.”

In addition to Sekhon, the Marion County Coroner’s office identified the dead 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 began firing randomly at people in the parking lot of the FedEx facility, killing four, before entering the building, fatally shooting four more people and then turning the gun on himself.

Authorities have not publicly speculated on a motive.

The killings marked the latest in a string 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 employee of FedEx and last worked for the company in 2020. He said he did not know why Hole left the job or if he had ties to the workers in the facility.

About 90% of the workers at the FedEx warehouse near the Indianapolis International Airport are members of the local Sikh community, Indianapolis Police Chief Randal Taylor said on Friday.

Kuldip Sekhon said his family lost another relative in the shooting, Kaur, who was his son’s mother-in-law.

He said both Kaur and Amarjit Sekhon began working at the FedEx facility at the same time last November.

Komal Chohan, who said Amarjeet Johal was her grandmother, said in a statement issued by the Sikh Coalition that her family members, including several who work at the FedEx warehouse, are “traumatised” by the killings.

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

There are between 8,000 and 10,000 Sikh Americans in Indiana, according to the coalition.

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 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 against Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic.

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

Satjeet Kaur, the Sikh Coalition’s executive director, said the entire community was traumatised by the “senseless” violence.

“While we don’t yet know the motive of the shooter, he targeted a facility known to be heavily populated by Sikh employees,” Kaur said.

Tejpaul Singh Bainiwal of Stockton, California, who participated in a martial arts tournament in Indiana, where the local gurdwara was host, said this year’s holiday celebrations would be intensely sombre.

“How do you celebrate after something like this?” he said.