San Jose mass shooting: Tarn Taran village mourns Sikh youth’s death
Train operator Taptejdeep Singh is survived by two children, besides wife and elderly parents, who have been in the US for two decades
Taptejdeep Singh, the 36-year-old train operator who was among the eight people killed in the mass shooting at San Jose in California on Wednesday, belonged to Gagrewal village in Khadoor Sahib sub division of Punjab’s Tarn Taran district.
Taptejdeep is survived by two children, aged eight and two, besides his wife and elderly parents. He had migrated to the United States with his father, Sarabjit Singh Gill, and uncles more than two decades ago.
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A former sarpanch of Gagrewal, Kashmir Singh, who lives in the neighbourhood of the grieving family’s locked house, said: “Taptejdeep had been living in the US for 20-25 years. His parents, uncles, namely Inderjit Singh, Ranjit Singh and Amarjit Singh, are also settled there. Though the family members rarely visited the village, we share deep ties with them. The death of the young man is a loss for us. We are in grief.”
A media portal quoted Taptejdeep’s cousin, Bagga Singh, who also lives in the US, as saying, “My cousin was a train operator. He was one of several relatives, all immigrants from India, working for the transit agency, Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, but my cousin was the only one on duty on Wednesday morning when the shooting occurred.”
On April 15, four members of the Sikh community, including three women, were killed in a shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis, Indiana, in the US. A total of nine people were killed, including the shooter, a 19-year-old former employee named Brandon Scott Hole, who committed suicide.
Expressing concern over the incidents of violence, in which members of the Sikh community were also targeted, US-based Punjabi community activist Sameep Singh Gumtala said, “The country is suffering from an epidemic of gun violence”
