Two days before the FedEx shooting, Sikhs celebrated Vaisakhi, an annual religious holiday. On Sunday, the community gathered to mourn for victims.
In the parking lot of Plymouth’s Mata Tripta Ji Gurdwara Sahib, a familiar sense of sorrow cloaked community members as they prayed for the Indianapolis FedEx facility shooting victims on Sunday. It was a feeling gurdwara members felt before as they placed memorial candles in front of the building. The vigil was held at the same house of worship where hundreds gathered nine years ago for a vigil after a white supremacist fatally shot six Sikhs at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, in 2012. On Thursday,19-year-old Brandon Scott Hole shot and killed eight people and wounded several others at a FedEx Ground Plainfield Operations Center, USA Today reports. Hole died by suicide, and four of the eight shooting victims belonged to the Sikh community. During Sunday’s vigil, Sona Sandhu,41, of Northville, said when news first broke of the shooting, her first reaction was sadness. Her second thought, she said, centered on the need to improve cultural awareness.. “We all have to treat each other equally. This is America. This is a melting pot,” she said. “We all should respect and value each other’s religious beliefs, and each other’s appearances. Sikhs, they have a different appearance than most other Americans, and I think people need to educate themselves, or maybe we as a Sikh faith have to come up and start educating people better.” Sandhu said she hopes there is more education regarding different values and cultures, but she also hopes for more gun laws.
