Gunman in Sikh temple attack was white supremacist

OAK CREEK, Wis. (AP) — The gun­man who killed six peo­ple at a Sikh tem­ple in Wis­con­sin before being shot to death by police was iden­ti­fied Mon­day as a 40-year-old Army vet­eran and for­mer leader of a white suprema­cist heavy metal band.

Wade Michael Page strode into the tem­ple car­ry­ing a 9mm hand­gun and mul­ti­ple mag­a­zines of ammu­ni­tion and opened fire with­out say­ing a word, author­i­ties said.

When the shoot­ing at the Sikh Tem­ple of Wis­con­sin in sub­ur­ban Mil­wau­kee ended, six vic­tims rang­ing in age from 39 to 84 years old lay dead. Three oth­ers were crit­i­cally wounded.

Page, who joined the Army in 1992 and was dis­charged in 1998, was described by the South­ern Poverty Law Cen­ter as a “frus­trated neo-Nazi” who was active in the obscure under­world of white suprema­cist music.

Mark Potok, a senior fel­low at the non­profit civil rights orga­ni­za­tion in Mont­gomery, Ala., said Page had been on the white-power music scene for more than a decade, play­ing in bands known as Def­i­nite Hate and End Apathy.

“The name of the band seems to reflect what he went out and actu­ally did,” said Potok. The music often includes lyrics that dis­cuss geno­cide against Jews and other minorities.

In a 2010 inter­view, Page told a white suprema­cist web­site that he became active in white-power music in 2000, when he left his native Col­orado and started the band End Apa­thy in 2005.

He told the web­site his “inspi­ra­tion was based on frus­tra­tion that we have the poten­tial to accom­plish so much more as indi­vid­u­als and a soci­ety in whole,” accord­ing to the law cen­ter. He did not men­tion violence.

End Apathy’s MySpace page said the group was based in Nashville, N.C.

Joseph Rack­ley of Nashville, N.C., said Mon­day that Page lived with his son for about six months last year in a house on Rackley’s prop­erty. Wade was bald and had tat­toos all over his arms, Rack­ley said, but he doesn’t remem­ber what they depicted. He said he wasn’t aware of any ties Page had to white supremacists.

“I’m not a nosy kind of guy,” Rack­ley said. “When he stayed with my son, I don’t even know if Wade played music. But my son plays alter­na­tive music, and peri­od­i­cally I’d have to call them because I could hear more than I wanted to hear.”

Page joined the mil­i­tary in Mil­wau­kee in 1992 and was a repair­man for the Hawk mis­sile sys­tem before switch­ing jobs to become one of the Army’s psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tions spe­cial­ists assigned to a bat­tal­ion at Fort Bragg, N.C.

As a psy­ops spe­cial­ist, Page would have trained to host pub­lic meet­ings between locals and Amer­i­can forces, use leaflet cam­paigns in a con­flict zone or use loud­speak­ers to com­mu­ni­cate with enemy soldiers.

He never deployed over­seas while serv­ing in that role, Pen­ta­gon spokesman George Wright said.

Page was demoted in June 1998 for get­ting drunk while on duty and going AWOL, two defense offi­cials said, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymity because they were not autho­rized to release infor­ma­tion about the gunman.

Page also received extra duty and was fined. The defense offi­cials said they had no other details about the inci­dent, such as how long Page was gone or whether he turned him­self in.

Online records show Page had a brief crim­i­nal his­tory in other states, includ­ing plead­ing guilty to mis­de­meanor crim­i­nal mis­chief after a 1994 arrest in El Paso. He received six months’ pro­ba­tion. Page also pleaded guilty to dri­ving under the influ­ence in Col­orado in 1999 but never com­pleted a sen­tence that included alco­hol treat­ment, records show.

Sub­ur­ban Mil­wau­kee police had no con­tact with Page before Sunday’s shoot­ing, and his record gave no indi­ca­tion he was capa­ble of such vio­lence, author­i­ties said.

The FBI was lead­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion because the shoot­ing was con­sid­ered domes­tic ter­ror­ism, or an attack that orig­i­nated inside the U.S. The agency said it had no rea­son to believe any­one other than Page was involved.

Page began shoot­ing as sev­eral dozen peo­ple pre­pared for Sun­day services.

Sat­pal Kaleka, wife of the temple’s pres­i­dent, Sat­want Singh Kaleka, was in the front room and saw the gun­man enter the tem­ple, accord­ing to Harpreet Singh, their nephew.

“He did not speak. He just began shoot­ing,” said Singh, relay­ing a descrip­tion of the attack from Sat­pal Kaleka.

Kaleka said the 6-foot bald white man — who wor­ship­pers said they had never seen before — seemed like he knew where he was going.

“We never thought this could hap­pen to our com­mu­nity,” said Deven­dar Nagra of Mount Pleas­ant, whose sis­ter escaped injury by hid­ing as the gun­man fired in the temple’s kitchen. “We never did any­thing wrong to anyone.”

Fed­eral offi­cials said the gun used in the attack had been legally purchased.

Page was issued five pistol-purchase per­mits in 2008 by the Cum­ber­land County Sheriff’s office in North Car­olina, pay­ing a $5 fee for each. The sheriff’s office declined to release his appli­ca­tion form, which requires another per­son to affirm the appli­cant is of “good moral char­ac­ter.” The forms also typ­i­cally ask about mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence of appli­cants, who must pass a crim­i­nal back­ground check.

Page did not have the addi­tional per­mit needed to legally carry a con­cealed weapon.

On Sun­day, the first offi­cer to respond was shot eight to nine times as the offi­cer tended to a vic­tim out­side. A sec­ond offi­cer then exchanged gun­fire with the sus­pect, who was fatally shot.

The wounded offi­cer was in crit­i­cal con­di­tion Mon­day, along with two other peo­ple who were wounded.

Bal­gin­der Khat­tra of Oak Creek, said Mon­day that his 84-year-old father, Suveg Singh Khat­tra, was among the dead. Khat­tra says his father didn’t speak Eng­lish but loved liv­ing in America.

Sikhism is a monothe­is­tic faith founded more than 500 years ago in South Asia. It has roughly 27 mil­lion fol­low­ers world­wide. Obser­vant Sikhs do not cut their hair. Male fol­low­ers often cover their heads with tur­bans — which are con­sid­ered sacred — and refrain from shav­ing their beards. There are roughly 500,000 Sikhs in the U.S., accord­ing to esti­mates. The major­ity world­wide live in India.

The Sikh Tem­ple of Wis­con­sin started in 1997 with about 25 fam­i­lies who gath­ered in com­mu­nity halls in Mil­wau­kee. Con­struc­tion on the cur­rent tem­ple in Oak Creek began in 2006, accord­ing to the temple’s website.

The New York-based Sikh Coali­tion has reported more than 700 hate crimes in the U.S. since 9/11 and has fielded com­plaints in the thou­sands from Sikhs about work­place dis­crim­i­na­tion and racial pro­fil­ing. With their tur­bans and long beards, Sikhs are often mis­taken for Mus­lims or Arabs, and have inad­ver­tently become tar­gets of anti-Muslim bias in the United States.

The shoot­ing also came two weeks after a gun­man killed 12 peo­ple at movie the­ater in Colorado.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Aug 6 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.