San Francisco: The grieving relatives of the four Indian-origin Sikhs killed in the US have raised more than USD 300,000 to support their families in California but also their elderly parents back in India.
The Sikh family of four, 8-month-old Aroohi Dheri, her 27-year-old mother Jasleen Kaur, her 36-year-old father Jasdeep Singh, and her 39-year-old uncle Amandeep Singh were kidnapped and killed by a former employee of their trucking company last week.
A GoFundMe fundraiser is collecting funds for the Singhs’ extended family and has raised more than USD 300,000, according to abc7news.com.
Jaspreet Kaur, Amandeep’s widow, said in the fundraiser that her husband and his brother had been in the United States for 18 years and supported not only their families in California but also their elderly parents back in India.
“This is the story of our shared American dream gone wrong,” she wrote. “Our loving family was violently taken away from us on October 3rd,” the family’s GoFundMe page said.
The funds would go towards helping Aroohi’s grandparents and the family of Amandeep Singh, his wife Jaspreet Kaur, and their two kids, both under the age of 10.
The family, originally from Harsi Pind in Hoshiarpur, Punjab, was kidnapped at a business in Merced County, California, on October 3.
The bodies of all four were found two days later on October 5.
A four-day vigil observed for the victims in Merced ended on Sunday.
Jesus Salgado, the man involved in the kidnapping and killing was arrested on October 6.
On Friday Salgado’s younger brother, Alberto Salgado, was arrested on charges of criminal conspiracy and destroying evidence.
Investigators are still trying to determine a motive, but Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke said he believes it could relate to money, adding there was no evidence to suggest the incident may have been a hate crime.
Salgado was a former employee of the family who had a longstanding dispute with them that “got pretty nasty,” authorities said.
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