Jasleen Kaur, 27, her husband Jasdeep Singh, 36, their eight-month-old daughter Aroohi Dheri, and Singh’s brother Amandeep, 39, were all found dead Wednesday afternoon, some 48 hours after they were abducted under. the threat of a gun from their business. office in Merced, California.
The motive for the crime is not known, but it is believed to be of a financial nature. A few hours before the bodies were found in a rural California shack, police released surveillance footage of the family being led out of their new trucking business with their hands tied in zip cables.
They are believed to have been killed by Jesus Manuel Salgado, a 48-year-old criminal who was tracked down after attempting to use one of the victim’s ATM cards. Salgado was convicted of armed robbery of another family of haulers in 2005 and had spent 11 years in prison. He is currently in the hospital after attempting to kill himself as the police were approaching him.
Jesus Salgado suspected of kidnapping Sikh family at gunpoint in Central California (AP)
California Sikhs, many of them descendants of settlers who arrived on the West Coast more than a century ago, are mainly engaged in agriculture and the trucking industry. The state also elected Asia’s first ever legislator, Congressman Dalip Singh Saund, who served three terms in the House of Representatives in the 1950s. The community earlier last week lost Didar Singh Bains, 84, America’s largest peach farmer and one of the richest farmers in the United States.
Jasdeep Singh’s family was of relatively more recent ancestry and came from Harsi Pind to Hoshiarpur. They had only recently started their trucking business, according to local reports.
“There are no words to describe the anger I feel and the nonsense of this incident,” Merced County Sheriff Vern Warnke said Wednesday night after the bodies were discovered. “There’s a special place in hell for this guy (the alleged culprit).”
