Sikh Community Mourns Victims of Indianapolis FedEx Shooting

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

Her death Thursday night in a mass shooting that claimed the lives of seven other FedEx employees — four of them Sikhs — has left the community stunned and in mourning, her brother-in-law, Kuldip Sekhon, said Saturday.

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

“She was a workaholic, she always was working, working. She would never sit still unless she felt really bad,” he said.

The killings marked the latest in a string of recent mass shootings across the country and the third this year in Indianapolis. The shooting is the deadliest incident of violence 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 six.

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

“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, the Sikh Coalition’s 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.”

Authorities have not publicly speculated on a motive, but Deputy Police Chief Craig McCartt of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said the gunman was a former employee of FedEx and last worked for the company in 2020.

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

The impact of the violence in Indiana is being felt in many communities in California as well, where Sikhism has a long history. Sikhs have had a presence in California for over 100 years, and opened their first house of worship, known as a Gurdwara , in Stockton in 1912.

Naindeep Singh, the executive director of the Fresno-based Jakara Movement, said many friends and relatives of workers in Indianapolis began reaching out to him and his colleagues almost immediately.

At the facility, workers were separated from their phones, according to Singh. “There was a lot of confusion. Many families were reaching out almost in real time,” he said.

Some of the Sikh victims had at one point lived in California and have friends and family in the state, according to Singh.

He said language barriers and lack of mobile phone access were factors in poor communication to the families of victims. “I think language was definitely an issue. Not having a cellphone was definitely an issue. And the police not being as forthcoming with the families, I think also created another issue,” Singh said. “Families were running around hospital to the hospital to see if their loved ones were turning up there.”

Jakara Movement is planning several vigils — open to all — in Sacramento, Bakersfield, Ceres, Fresno and Fremont on Sunday evening.

“I have several family members who work at the particular facility and are traumatized,” Komal Chohan, granddaughter of Amarjeet Johal, 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.”

Members of the religion, which began in India in the 15th century, began settling in Indiana more than 50 years ago and opened a Gurdwara there in 1999.

The attack was another blow to Asian American communities a month after eight people were killed, including six women of Asian descent, in a mass shooting in the Atlanta area and amid ongoing attacks against Asians during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We are fighting for the soul of this country,” wrote scholar and activist Simran Jeet Singh a day after the shooting. “The lives lost in Indianapolis provide a stark reminder that while this attack disproportionately impacted our community, it’s not just about a single community. Attacks such as these impact all of us.”

Paul Keenan, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Indianapolis field office, said Friday that agents questioned the shooter last year after his mother called police to say that her son might commit “suicide by cop.” Keenan said the FBI was called after items were found in the gunman’s bedroom but he did not elaborate on what they were. He said agents found no evidence of a crime and that they did not identify the shooter as espousing a racially motivated ideology.

In Indianapolis, several dozen people gathered at the Olivet Missionary Baptist Church on the city’s west side Saturday afternoon 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.”

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 for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.