Los Angeles: A 36-year-old Indian-origin Sikh man was among eight people killed in the horrific rail yard shooting in San Jose in the US state of California, according to media reports.
Taptejdeep Singh, born in India and raised in Union City, California, has left behind his wife, three-year-old son, one-year-old daughter, and a grieving Sikh community in the San Francisco Bay Area, which described him as a “helpful and caring” man, The Mercury News reported. The death of Singh, who moved to the US from India in 2005, marks the second time in two months that members of the country’s Sikh community mourned after a mass shooting. In April, four Sikhs were among the eight people killed in a shooting at a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis.
Family members said county officials told them that Taptejdeep Singh acted heroically when he detected danger during the attack, calling out to his co-workers that shots were being fired and quickly ushering one woman into a secure room. “I think he’s the one who tried to save the people, as many as he could,” said Bagga Singh, who also spoke out against gun violence: “Nobody should have a gun.”
Samuel Cassidy, 57, a maintenance worker of the VTA, San Jose, gunned down eight of his co-workers and critically injured another in a one of the deadliest shootings in California this year. As police arrive, the killer died of a self-inflicted gunshot.
Singh was a light rail operator at the VTA for nine years now. He worked at a separate building from where most of the other victims were found, giving the impression that Cassidy had selected his victims. Singh was fatally shot in the stairwell of a VTA building, the report said.
Singh’s brother-in-law, P J Bath, another light rail operator at the VTA, confirmed that the shooter and Singh were in different buildings initially but said nothing on the victims being pre-decided by the killer. “He just happened to be in the way, I guess. He was always helpful to everyone and caring,” Bath said. The other victims of the shooting were identified as Paul Delacruz Megia (42), Adrian Balleza (29), Jose Dejesus Hernandez (35), Timothy Michael Romo (49), Michael Joseph Rudometkin (40), Abdolvahab Alaghmandan (63), and Lars Kepler Lane (63). The motive behind the shooting is not yet clear.
