As he fired,they shut themselves in bathrooms,made frantic calls

The gunman stalked through the temple sometime before 10:26 am. Congregants ran for shelter and barricaded themselves in bathrooms and prayer halls,where they made desperate phone calls and sent anguished texts pleading for help as confusion and fear took hold.

Two children ran to the kitchen,and they and the women there — 16 people in all — made for a pantry,closed themselves in and huddled,according to a report published online in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The women later escaped,witnessing the gunman’s carnage along the way.

Two priests and a few others locked themselves inside a bathroom,the Sentinel said. Among them was Satwant Singh Kaleka,the temple president,shot twice and who later died.

Satpal Kaleka,his wife,relayed the events to Harpreet Singh,their nephew,who was outside. She was in the kitchen with other women preparing food when they heard gunshots. “She said they heard a bang,bang,bang,” Singh said in a telephone interview. “He did not speak,he just began shooting.”

Singh was on his way to services with his wife,his two children and his parents when the police stopped them outside the parking lot. Sunday services normally begin at 11.30 am but people arrive much in advance.

After the shooting began,frantic posts on Twitter asked people not to call loved ones trapped inside on their cellphones. One such post,by SikhActivistNetwork@sikhactivist,read: “Victims in Sikh Temple asking: Do NOT call cellphones,they are currently in hiding and ringer may give up their positions. #TempleShooting.”

Among those who escaped the temple was a man who had been shot in the abdomen. He staggered to a ranch house 300 yards away and pounded on the door,the Sentinel reported. Jim Haase opened the door to see a grey-bearded man 60 or 70 years old standing in a blood-soaked white tunic. A weapons instructor,Haase grabbed a towel and laid the man on his lawn to apply pressure to stop the bleeding.

Friends and relatives,meanwhile,were struggling to understand what had happened.

Jatinder Mangat,40,another nephew of the temple president,was on his way to the gurdwara when he heard reports about the shooting. He said he tried to call his uncle but reached the head priest,Gurmail Singh,instead. “He was crying. Everyone was screaming,” Mangat said. “He said that my uncle was shot and was lying on the floor and asked why you guys are not sending an ambulance and police.”

Gurpreet Kaur,24,said her mother was among the group of women preparing a meal in the 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 a shrapnel wound in her foot.

The gunman’s rampage ended when one of the first police officers to arrive shot and killed him. Another police officer,who tried to aid a victim,was ambushed by the gunman and shot multiple times.

John Edwards,the police chief in Oak Creek,described a dramatic scene when officers arrived at the temple minutes after the first 911 call. After the gunman ambushed the first officer,a 20-year veteran,chief Edwards said,the second police officer exchanged fire with the gunman,bringing him down.

(Compiled from NYT and AP reports,and posts on website of milwaukee journal sentinel)

Min by min

10:20 am Gunman enters as priests assemble for prayer and women prepare food in kitchen. As he starts firing,people run and hide in bathrooms and prayer halls.

10: 26 am Milwaukee Sheriff Office and Oak Street police receive multiple calls about shooting at the gurdwara. They reach there within three minutes.

10.30 am The gunman fires at an Oak Street police officer several times,injuring him. A second police officer shoots the suspect dead.

11.18 am Froedtert Hospital receives three critically injured persons. One is wounded in abdomen and chest,another in extremities and face,the third in neck.

1.30 pm Police hold a news conference confirming the shooting. They say four people were killed inside the temple and three outside.

4 pm Oak Street police chief John Edwards holds news conference. He confirms that one of the three killed outside was the shooter.

In one shattered family,slain temple head,a bride-to-be and Punjab minister

HARPREET BAJWA
Chandigarh: Satwant Singh Kaleka,the gurdwara president killed in the firing,was a brother-in-law of Punjab minister Surjit Singh Rakhra,having married the latter’s sister Satpal. Darshan Singh Dhaliwal,brother of Rakhra and Satpal Kaleka,survived by hiding in a cupboard.

The shooting came days ahead of the scheduled wedding of Dhaliwal’s daughter on August 11.

When the attacker opened fire,Kaleka tried to resisit him outside the temple,his son said. Wounded in his lower extremities,Kaleka,65,made it inside,hid with others in a room,and died there. “It was like a second home to him,” Amardeep Kaleka said of his father’s love for the gurdwara. “He was the kind of person who,if he got a call that a bulb was out at 2 am,he’d go over to change it,” the son was quoted as saying by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Kaleka has two sons,one of them a former police officer. President of the gurdwara since 1997,he hailed from village Kaleka in Patiala.

Dhaliwal,who owns two fuel stations in the US,was in the gurdwara with the women cooking langar when the gunman arrived. Dhaliwal was planning the wedding in a Milwaukee ranch where he had earlier hosted former President Bill Clinton. His daughter,Tina Kaur,is a psychologist; the groom is called Joshua. Celebrations were to begin on Monday with Akhand Path.

Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal left on Monday night to attend the wedding,part of a guest list that includes ministers S S Dhillon,Anil Joshi and Chunni Lal Bhagat,Speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal chief parliamentary secretaries Mohinder Kaur Josh,N K Sharma and Nand Lal,and former Union minister Balwant Singh Ramoowalia. The original plans included performances by Gurdas Mann,Daler Mehndi and Harbhajan Mann.

Kaleka was a popular gurdwara head. “Getting elected unanimously as a gurdwara president is very rare,but since 2007,when the new building was built,Kaleka remained the only gurdwara president,unopposed,” said Dr Manminder Singh Sethi,who would have gone to the gurdwara for prayers but called it off after being alerted.

Among the others killed was Parkash Singh,38,a raagi who had brought his wife and two children over to the US only two months ago. Parkash Singh hailed from Haridwar. His wife and two children too were in the gurdwara.

Subegh Singh Khatra,84,the oldest of those killed,hailed from Patiala. Always at the gurdwara from 7 to 7,interacting with everyone visiting,Khata was popular with all devotees.

The other three killed were hymn singer Ranjit Singh,priest Sita Singh,and Parmjit Kaur Toor,a congregant originally from SBS Nagar in Punjab.

With Navjeevan Gopal in Amritsar

‘About to park,I saw him kill 2’

Navjeevan Gopal
Amritsar: Ravinder Singh,42,heard the shots as he drove his taxi into the parking area of the gurdwara.

“I initially mistook the sound for firecrackers. But,then I saw a man in black trousers and a white T-short gunning down two persons and heading into the gurdwara,” Singh told The Indian Express from Milwaukee. “I drove away.”

Singh,who hails from Ganaganagar district in Rajasthan,would have joined the prayer service had he not seen the shooting. He warned his roommate,Dr Manminder Singh Sethi,a Bathinda-origin dentist settled in Milwaukee.

“I was late. As I was heading to the gurdwara,which is about 2km from where I live,I got this call from my roommate,” said Sethi,who works as director,Clinical Research and Education with Bio Research Associates Inc.

The prayer service starts at 11.30 am but some devotees arrive early. Had the shooter arrived an hour later than he did,Singh said,he would have found a much larger crowd. This,he felt,would have resulted in many more casualties.

Sethi agreed the shooter’s arrival when the crowd was thin may have prevented higher casualties. “The langar was being prepared and had the firing taken place during the meal,the casualties would have been much more,” said Sethi.

A family from Lake Geneva,Wisconsin,had organised an Akhand Path when the shooting took place,said Sethi,who went to the gurdwara later. “Some eyewitnesses said that two children of the family,on seeing the man opening fire outside,ran towards the gurdwara and raised the alarm,prompting the women preparing the langar to hide,” said Sethi.

The 6 victims

* Satwant Singh Kaleka,president of the Gurdwara,hailed from Patiala

* Parkash Singh,gurdwara priest,hailed from Haridwar

* Subegh Singh khtra,a congregant who hailed from Mathura

* Parmjit Kaur Toor,a congregant who hailed from SBS Nagar in Punjab

* Seeta Singh,a priest

* Ranjeet Singh,hymn singer

‘They see the turban,think you’re Taliban’

Though violence against Sikhs in Wisconsin was unheard of before the shooting,many in this community said they had sensed a rise in antipathy since the 9/11 attacks and suspected it was because people mistake them for Muslims.

“Everyone here is thinking this is a hate crime for sure,” said Manjit Singh,who goes to a different gurdwara in the region. “People think we are Muslims.”

“Most people are so ignorant they don’t know the difference between religions,” said Ravi Chawla,65,a businesswoman who moved to the region from Pakistan in the 1970s. “Just because they see the turban they think you’re Taliban.”

There are around 314,000 Sikhs in the United States,according to the Association of Religion Data Archives. The temple in Oak Creek,one of two large congregations in the Milwaukee area,was founded in 1997 and has about 400 worshipers.

In April,Representative Joseph Crowley,Democrat of New York and co-chairman of the Congressional Caucus on Indians and Indian-Americans,sent a letter to the Attorney General urging the FBI to collect data on hate crimes committed against them. In the previous year alone,he said in the letter,two Sikh men in Sacramento were slain,a gurdwara in Michigan was vandalised,and a Sikh man was beaten in New York.

The Washington-based Sikh Coalition has reported more than 700 attacks in the US since 9/11,and believes this is due to anti-Islamic sentiment.

Valarie Kaur,who chronicled violence against Sikh Americans in the 2006 documentary Divided We Fall,said the shootings reopened wounds in a community whose members have found themselves frequent targets of hate-based attacks since September 11,2002.

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

Agencies