Indianapolis’ Sikh community mourns victims of mass shooting at FedEx facility

INDIANAPOLIS —  This city’s tight-knit Sikh community mourned Saturday after members learned that four Sikhs were among the eight people killed in the mass shooting at a FedEx warehouse.

The Marion County Coroner’s Office has identified the dead 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.

Indianapolis Deputy Police Chief Craig McCartt said the gunman, identified as Brandon Scott Hole, 19, apparently began firing randomly at people in the parking lot of the FedEx facility late Thursday night, killing four, before entering the building, fatally shooting four more people and turning the gun on himself. Several others were injured.

It was not clear whether Sikhs were targeted specifically.

Police Chief Randal Taylor noted that a “significant” number of employees at the FedEx facility are members of the Sikh community. Some gathered at a hotel Friday looking for information on family and friends.

“I have several family members who work at the particular facility and are traumatized,” Komal Chohan, who said Johal was her grandmother, said in a statement issued by the Sikh Coalition. “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.”

Sekhon, a 48-year-old mother of two sons, was the breadwinner of her family and one of many members of Indianapolis’ Sikh community employed at the warehouse on the city’s southwest side.

Kuldip Sekhon said his sister-in-law began working at the FedEx facility in November and was a dedicated employee whose husband was disabled.

“She was a workaholic. She always was working, working,” he said. “She would never sit still. ... The other day she had the [COVID-19] shot and she was really sick, but she still went to work.”

There are between 8,000 and 10,000 Sikh Americans in Indiana, according to the Sikh Coalition. Members of the religion, which began in India in the 15th century, began settling in Indiana more than 50 years ago and opened the state’s first Sikh 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 during the pandemic.

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

Hole’s motives remained unclear Saturday.

“While we don’t yet know the motive of the shooter, he targeted a facility known to be heavily populated by Sikh employees, and the attack is traumatic for our community as we continue to face senseless violence,” said Satjeet Kaur, Sikh Coalition executive director. “Further traumatizing is the reality that many of these community members, like Sikhs we have worked with in the past, will eventually have to return to the place where their lives were almost taken from them.”

The coalition says an estimated 500,000 Sikhs live in the U.S. Many practicing Sikhs are visually distinguishable by their articles of faith, which include unshorn hair and a turban.

The shooting is the deadliest attack collectively in the Sikh community in the U.S. since 2012, when a white supremacist burst into a Sikh temple in Wisconsin and shot 10 people, killing seven. The gunman killed himself during a gunfight with police.

Paul Keenan, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Indianapolis field office, said Friday that agents questioned Hole last year after his mother called police to say that her son might attempt “suicide by cop.”

He said the FBI was called after items were found in Hole’s bedroom, but he did not say what they were. He said agents found no evidence of a crime and did not identify Hole as espousing a racially motivated ideology.

A police report obtained by the Associated Press shows that officers seized 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.

Smith, one of the youngest victims, was last in contact with her family shortly before 11 p.m. 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,” Troutman said in a Facebook post Friday night.

Weisert had been working as a bag handler at FedEx for four years, his wife, Carol, told WISH-TV. The couple were married nearly 50 years.

Blackwell, of Indianapolis, was a soccer and basketball player who last year graduated from Indy Genesis, a Christian competitive sports organization. Her parents said Saturday in a statement that she was an outgoing “people person” — the youngest of four children who will be missed “immensely” by them and her dog, Jasper.

“As an intelligent, straight A student, Samaria could have done anything she chose to put her mind to, and because she loved helping people, she dreamed of becoming a police officer. Although that dream has been cut short, we believe that right now she is rejoicing in heaven with her Savior,” they said.

Alexander, of Avon, just west of Indianapolis, was a former Butler University student and a 2007 graduate of Avon High School. Relatives and several of his former baseball teammates at Avon attended a game Saturday in his memory. They carried his former uniform, No. 16, onto the field, where they hugged and cried.

Albert Ashcraft, a former FedEx driver who worked with Alexander for about five years, said Alexander dispatched drivers to locations for deliveries, prepared their paperwork and was well-liked because he looked out for the drivers, even making sure they got treats.

“People would bring doughnuts in, and he was always sticking doughnuts back for his drivers,” he told the Indianapolis Star.

Several dozen people gathered at Olivet Missionary Baptist Church on the city’s west side Saturday to mourn and to call for action.

“The system failed our state the other night,” said Cathy Weinmann, a volunteer with Moms Demand Action. “That young man should have never had access to a gun. … We will not accept this, and we demand better than this for our community.”

McCartt said Hole was a former employee of FedEx and last worked for the company in 2020. The deputy police chief said he did not know why Hole left the job or whether he had ties to the workers in the facility.

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

Five people, including a pregnant woman, were killed in the city in January, and a man was accused of killing three adults and a child before abducting his daughter during an argument at a home in March.

The Atlanta-area shooting killed a total of eight people at massage businesses in the Atlanta area, and 10 died in gunfire at a supermarket in Boulder, Colo.