Shooter was former Fedex employee
Eight people killed, seven injured in massacre at plant
The gunman who carried out a massacre at a Fedex sorting facility, killing eight people before shooting himself, was a 19-year-old former employee who had had a shotgun seized by authorities last year, Indianapolis police said Friday.
The shooting, which left seven injured, came during a shift break at the facility, and left bodies throughout the parking lot and inside the cavernous warehouse just after 11 p.m. Thursday night.
Authorities said they were investigating what might have motivated the killer, whom they identified as Brandon Hole. He appeared to have fired his assault rifle at "random," officials said, and the entire attack lasted no more than a couple of minutes. For hours afterward, relatives of those who had been at work at Fedex waited to learn whether their loved ones had lived or died. Authorities identified the victims as Matthew Alexander, 32; Samaria Blackwell, 19; Amarjeet Johal, 66; Jaswinder Kaur, 64; Jaswinder Singh, 68; Amarjit Sekhon, 48; Karli Smith, 19; and John Weisert, 74. A family member gave a different age for Sekhon (49) and a different age and name spelling for Jasvinder Kaur (50).
At least four of those killed were members of the Sikh community in Indianapolis, according to the Sikh Coalition, a national advocacy group. Among them was Johal - a hard worker who took night shifts at the Fedex facility to support her family, including at least three grandchildren, according
to Gurpreet Singh, the president of her temple. Johal's granddaughter, Komal Chohan, said that she is "heartbroken" and that several other family members who work at the Fedex facility are "traumatized."
"My nani, my family and our families should not feel unsafe at work, at their place of worship or anywhere," Chohan said. "Enough is enough - our
community has been through enough trauma."
Long before the shooting, Hole had been known to law enforcement. Last spring, after his mother reported her fears that he would attempt "suicide by cop," he was questioned by authorities, and the police temporarily detained him for mental health reasons, FBI Indianapolis Special Agent in Charge Paul Keenan said.
With Hole's shotgun seized and not returned, it was unclear how he had obtained the rifle used Thursday night.
The mass killing in Indianapolis was the latest in a grim litany that has left a trail of bloodstained sorrow across the country this spring. In the past five weeks, there have been six public mass shootings in the United States, including massacres at three Atlanta spas and a supermarket in Boulder, Colo. Together, the shootings have claimed 40 lives. The Indianapolis killing came a day before the 14th anniversary of a mass shooting at Virginia Tech, in which a gunman killed 32 people.
The latest killings add to an endlessly growing list of communities scarred by a burst of gunfire in a shared space, including violent rampages that cut people down in workplaces, churches, synagogues, schools, grocery stores, movie theaters, nightclubs and concerts.
As with those shootings, the political response to the massacre in Indianapolis followed a well-worn pattern on Friday: Democrats insisted on strengthening gun control laws, while Republicans remained unbendingly opposed.
President Biden said Friday that gun violence "stains our character and pierces the very soul of our nation.”