♪
POLICE DISPATCH: Shooter, white male wearing a hat,
has a machine gun currently in front of the building.
We have three units arriving.
He is outside in the parking lot.
He said he's in a black Buick Rendezvous.
EMS is en route.
Attention all units, there is only one shooter,
gunshot wound to the head; he is down.
DISPATCH 2: 3-11 to all units on FedEx...
NEWS ANCHOR: Breaking news, there's been another
deadly mass shooting in America.
NEWS ANCHOR 2: At least eight people were shot and killed
in a shooting late Thursday night at a FedEx facility.
♪
KOMAL CHOHAN: On Thursday night,
I get on Twitter and I just see...
like, hashtags, clips of people saying
that there was a shooting at FedEx.
A lot of my family works there.
I have about 30 family members that work there,
and it ended up being like 12 or 13 of them were there.
We are finally seeing the faces
of all eight people who were killed
Thursday night while working at FedEx here in Indy.
Among the victims, four members of the Sikh community.
NEWS ANCHOR: 90% of the workers at this facility
are Sikh.
MANINDER WALIA: I started getting calls.
I didn't pay any attention
because you don't expect this, this could happen.
There is no protocol for these things.
I don't know what to do.
ANCHORWOMAN: 66-year-old Amarjeet Kaur Johal
worked at the FedEx sorting facility
to help support her family.
CHOHAN: She was getting off her shift.
We were able to find everybody except for her.
My mother's not answering her phone.
She's nowhere to be found.
Her car's still outside in the parking lot, you could see it.
We just didn't understand
how to process what happened.
♪
(birds chirping)
SINGH: America has been my home for the past 56 years.
I was one of the first Sikhs
that ever landed in the city of Indianapolis.
I am a proud American.
And maybe one of these days you'll ask me, "So, K.P. Singh,
"tell me about yourself, or your family,
or your turban, or your beard," or whatever.
There was a huge influx of people
from Punjabi and the Sikh community
that began in the late '80s
and '90s and it's still continuing.
(indistinct chatter)
And the population, from a few thousand,
is maybe close to 10,000 people
right here in the state of Indiana.
WALIA: Majority of Sikhs and Punjabis moved here
because they were in trucking business.
You go 65 highway.
You can go to Florida, you can go to Texas.
You can go to Cincinnati, you can go to Ohio.
You can go to Michigan, you can go to Canada.
So this was the crossroads of America.
While they're driving their trucks,
why not live in a place where they can have a nice house?
Economically, this is a much better place.
KULDEEP SAHI: My husband used to do real estate, and he went
and got a job in Indianapolis.
So we moved with him.
(speaking Punjabi):
If you work hard, you will get everything in America.
You have a good life here.
More opportunity for every single thing.
CHOHAN: She was the glue to all of us.
She helped everybody through any obstacle that they have.
She liked going to work
because they could speak their language, they could share food.
They were always bringing in stuff for each other.
So this was their second family.
It's like going to work with your friends.
Of course, you're going to be excited
to go to work with your friends.
♪
(paper crinkling)
JOHAL: I guess the simplest way I could put this--
if you guys ever know what a god is like?
That's what my mom was like.
Every time I went to the temple,
Gurdwara, everything that they taught over there,
like everything that they read out of the holy book,
kind of just explained my mom to me, you know?
That's how good she was.
That's how good-hearted she was.
♪
REPORTER: Officials have not yet determined why
19-year-old Brandon Scott Hole targeted
the FedEx facility, but investigators say
he used to work there.
REPORTER: Police said the gunman
shot and killed himself.
REPORTER: The FBI revealing there were warning signs.
Hole's mother reported her son to law enforcement.
REPORTER: Police found white supremacist websites
on the gunman's computer.
He was reported by his mother a year ago.
He would have been stopped according to the Red Flag Law.
REPORTER: Authorities had not deemed Hole
subject to Indiana's Red Flag Law,
allowing police or family members
to petition a state court to temporarily remove a firearm
from a person presenting a danger to others or themselves.
CHOHAN: There was all of this evidence that would support
a judge saying this person should not have a gun,
but his case never even went to trial.
Ultimately, the judge determines
whether a person is labeled as dangerous.
We presented what we had to the prosecutor's office,
and that decision from the Marion County
prosecutor's office was not to move forward.
It did not get into court.
Although, we kept the gun that we seized,
he was still able to go out and legally purchase other firearms.
(man singing)
AMRITH KAUR AAKRE: For the Sikh community,
it's not what happened, it's why it happened.
♪
When the offender is dead,
unless there is some smoking gun manifesto,
you're never going to know the whole story.
But what you want to know is
a general picture.
Why did he target this shift?
Who's working this particular shift?
What is the security like?
What's the workplace culture?
The shooter in this case lived, you know, 30 to 40 minutes away,
and had actually worked at other places,
and chose this place for a reason.
He used to work there.
And I'm sure he knew the folks there.
Why this took place...
is a question in my mind,
and I'm sure it's a question in a lot of people's mind,
that they want the answer for.
REPORTER: The Sikh community wants investigators
to try and figure out the motives
behind this mass shooting.
The Sikh community demands answers.
We will keep pushing the authorities
to keep us updated on all developments.
♪
AAKRE: I didn't see a real attempt from the FBI
to learn about the workplace culture itself.
There was a lack of connection
of all the dots that are in play.
And then all of a sudden, there is a press conference.
The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, or B.A.U.,
conducted an extensive review of all available evidence
and information gathered throughout this investigation.
Based on this, B.A.U. assesses
that this this was an act of suicidal murder,
in which the shooter decided to commit suicide
in a way which he believed would demonstrate
his masculinity and capability of fulfilling
a final desire to experience killing people.
And the shooter did not appear to have been motivated
by bias or a desire to advance an ideology.
WALIA: When this was announced,
I was there.
You know, I picked up the report at that time.
It says that the shooter,
"considered other targets for an attack,
but chose the FedEx location."
And I stopped.
I said this... what this means?
Why did he?
(indistinct singing)
(singing continues)
(singing)
CHOHAN: Every day we're questioning, was it because
of who we are,
or was it just because of where we work?
(singing)
For people to keep telling us,
no, there wasn't a bias,
like it makes us feel like we're crazy,
like we're making up scenarios in our head.
I think all of us question if we're safe here.
(singing)
JOHAL: When you go shooting into a building,
knowing this building is full of other ethnicities,
the majority of the people that are gonna get hit
are the majority of the people that work there.
(indistinct chatter)
CHOHAN: Even though told us that there wasn't a bias,
we're still going to question it.
AAKRE: It felt very much like there was
a complete lack of transparency
in what the investigation entailed,
what they were looking at, who they were talking to.
It didn't feel like
this community was given
their due in terms of respect.
It just felt like
dismissal.
(music playing)
(singing)
WALIA: Every day is a new challenge, new task,
and we're accepting it.
We have a commandment
from our gurus that's stay in the highest spirit.
Stay in Chardikala.
(indistinct chatter)
SINGH: Chardikala means
absolutely passionate, positive spirit.
(singing)
We'll be all right as time passes,
but the families have a very long haul.
As a community, we are keeping ourselves as safe as we can,
and we are still working very hard
on this whole idea of sense of belonging.
- How are you?
JOHAL: To me they're worth a lot.
Because they touched my mother's feet.
There was a lot of balls dropped.
What we were told a week and a half
after the incident
was pretty much word for word
what we were told at the press conference
three or four months later.
Pretty much word for word.
♪
Nothing's ever going to bring me relief.
If you lose one piece to a puzzle,
that puzzle is never complete.
I didn't lose a mother,
I lost my guru.
(dog barking)
SAHI:
People go back to their normal life again.
♪