Gunman kills 6 in Sikh temple attack in Wisconsin

A man wipes away tears out­side the Sikh Tem­ple in Oak Creek, Wis. where a shoot­ing took place Sun­day. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Jef­frey Phelps)

DINESH RAMDE

TODD RICHMOND

Asso­ci­ated Press

OAK CREEK, Wis. — An uniden­ti­fied gun­man killed six peo­ple at a Sikh tem­ple in sub­ur­ban Mil­wau­kee on Sun­day in a ram­page that left ter­ri­fied con­gre­gants hid­ing in clos­ets and oth­ers tex­ting friends out­side for help. The sus­pect was killed out­side the tem­ple in a shootout with police officers.

Police called the attack an act of domes­tic ter­ror­ism, but did not pro­vide any details about the gun­man or sug­gest a pos­si­ble motive, includ­ing whether he specif­i­cally tar­geted the Sikh temple.

“We never thought this could hap­pen to our com­mu­nity,” said Deven­dar Nagra, 48, of Mount Pleas­ant, whose sis­ter escaped injury by hid­ing as the gun­man fired in the temple’s kitchen. “We never did any­thing wrong to anyone.”

Late Sun­day, the inves­ti­ga­tion appeared to move beyond the tem­ple as police, fed­eral agents and the county sheriff’s bomb squad swarmed a neigh­bor­hood in nearby Cud­ahy and evac­u­ated sev­eral homes. Police roped off four blocks around a duplex, but the building’s owner, Kurt Weins, said author­i­ties would not say why they were there or if it was related to the shooting.

Oak Creek Police Chief John Edwards said police expected to release more infor­ma­tion Mon­day. He said the FBI will lead the inves­ti­ga­tion because the shoot­ings are being treated as domes­tic ter­ror­ism, or an attack that orig­i­nated inside the U.S.

“While the FBI is inves­ti­gat­ing whether this mat­ter might be an act of domes­tic ter­ror­ism, no motive has been deter­mined at this time,” Teresa Carl­son, Spe­cial Agent in Charge with the agency’s Mil­wau­kee divi­sion, said in a Sun­day night statement.

Dur­ing a chaotic few hours after the first shots were fired around 10:30 a.m., police in tac­ti­cal gear and car­ry­ing assault rifles sur­rounded the Sikh Tem­ple of Wis­con­sin with armored vehi­cles and ambu­lances. Wit­nesses strug­gled with unre­al­ized fears that sev­eral shoot­ers were hold­ing women and chil­dren hostage inside.

One of the first offi­cers to respond to fran­tic 911 calls seek­ing help was shot sev­eral times as he tended to a wounded vic­tim, and was in crit­i­cal con­di­tion along with two other vic­tims Sun­day night, author­i­ties said.

Jatin­der Man­gat, 38, of Racine, said his uncle Sat­want Singh Kaleka, the temple’s pres­i­dent, was one of those shot at the tem­ple, but he didn’t know the extent of Kaleka’s injuries. When he later learned peo­ple had died, Man­gat said “it was like the heart just sat down.”

“This shouldn’t hap­pen any­where,” he said.

Edwards said the gun­man “ambushed” one of the first offi­cers to arrive at the tem­ple as the offi­cer, a 20-year vet­eran with tac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence, tended to a vic­tim out­side. A sec­ond offi­cer then exchanged gun­fire with the sus­pect, who was fatally shot. Police had ear­lier said the offi­cer who was shot killed the sus­pected shooter.

Tac­ti­cal units went through the tem­ple and found four peo­ple dead inside and two out­side, in addi­tion to the shooter.

The three wounded were being treated at an area trauma cen­ter. Green­field Police Chief Bradley Went­landt, who assisted the inves­ti­ga­tion, said the police offi­cer had surgery and is expected to survive.

Gur­preet Kaur, 24, of Oak Creek, said her mother and a group of about 14 other women were prepar­ing a meal in the tem­ple kitchen when the gun­man entered and started fir­ing. Kaur said her mother felt two bul­lets fly by her as the group fled to the pantry. Her mother suf­fered what Kaur thought was shrap­nel wound in her foot.

“These are peo­ple I’ve grown up with,” she said. “They’re like aunts and uncles to me. To see our com­mu­nity to go through some­thing like this is numbing.”

Many Sikhs in the U.S. wor­ship on Sun­days at a tem­ple, or gur­d­wara, and a typ­i­cal ser­vice con­sists of med­i­ta­tion and singing in a prayer room where wor­ship­pers remove their shoes and sit on the floor. Wor­ship­pers gather after­ward for a meal that is open to com­mu­nity mem­bers, regard­less of their reli­gious beliefs.

Kaur said she spent the after­noon serv­ing as a trans­la­tor between law enforce­ment and sur­vivors at a nearby bowl­ing alley. Police inves­ti­ga­tors kept wit­nesses inside the bowl­ing alley’s base­ment into the evening.

“We don’t even know who’s down­stairs,” Ravi P. Singh, 25, of Green­field, said after going to the bowl­ing alley to see if he could get more infor­ma­tion about what had happened.

Sixteen-year-old LeRon Bridges, of Oak Creek, works at the bowl­ing alley said police brought peo­ple from the tem­ple over in two armored trucks. At one point, about 50 to 60 peo­ple were at the bowl­ing alley, includ­ing police offi­cers ques­tion­ing wit­nesses and para­medics treat­ing vic­tims’ wounds, he said.

“They were just hys­ter­i­cal,” Bridges said. “There were kids. One big load came out of the truck.”

Sikhism is a monothe­is­tic faith founded more than 500 years ago in South Asia. It has roughly 27 mil­lion fol­low­ers world­wide. Obser­vant Sikhs do not cut their hair; male fol­low­ers often cover their heads with tur­bans — which are con­sid­ered sacred — and refrain from shav­ing their beards. There are roughly 500,000 Sikhs in the U.S., accord­ing to esti­mates. The major­ity world­wide live in India.

The Sikh Tem­ple of Wis­con­sin started in 1997 with about 25 fam­i­lies who gath­ered in com­mu­nity halls in Mil­wau­kee. Con­struc­tion on the cur­rent tem­ple in Oak Creek began in 2006, accord­ing to the temple’s website.

Sikh rights groups have reported a rise in bias attacks since the Sept. 11 ter­ror­ist attacks. The Washington-based Sikh Coali­tion has reported more than 700 inci­dents in the U.S. since 9/11, which advo­cates blame on anti-Islamic sen­ti­ment. Sikhs are not Mus­lims, but their long beards and tur­bans often cause them to be mis­taken for Mus­lims, advo­cates say.

Police in New York and Chicago issued state­ments say­ing they were giv­ing Sikh tem­ples in those cities addi­tional atten­tion as a pre­cau­tion after the shoot­ing, which also came two weeks after a gun­man killed 12 peo­ple at movie the­ater in Colorado.

Valarie Kaur, who chron­i­cled vio­lence against Sikh Amer­i­cans in the 2006 doc­u­men­tary “Divided We Fall,” was return­ing to her home in New Haven, Conn., after speak­ing at a White House con­fer­ence Fri­day when she heard about the shootings.

Even though the gunman’s motives were a mys­tery Sun­day, Kaur said the shoot­ings reopened wounds in a com­mu­nity whose mem­bers have found them­selves fre­quent tar­gets of hate-based attacks since Sept. 11.

“We are expe­ri­enc­ing it as a hate crime,” she said. “Every Sikh Amer­i­can today is hurt­ing, griev­ing and afraid.”

Posted by AP News on Aug 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.