The Police Department in Kent, Washington is investigating a Friday night shooting that left a man wounded as a possible hate crime. A Sikh man was shot in Washington state by an attacker who approached him in his driveway and yelled, "go back to your own country" according to police reports. The victim was wearing a turban at the time of the shooting.
The Friday night shooting which took place city of Kent about 15 miles (24 km) south of Seattle, has followed a number of other attacks on Sikhs in the United States over a period of more than a decade. Authorities say around 8 p.m., an armed individual walked up to a man working on his car in a driveway at a house off 108th Avenue SE. According to Reuters, hate crime-tracking groups say assailants have occasionally mistaken Sikhs for Muslims, who have also been victimized in religiously motivated crimes. The good news: the victim was released from hospital with no permanent injury, the Seattle Times reported.
The Sikh man was working on his car in the driveway of his home when he was shot in the arm, according to Seattle television station KIRO 7, which spoke to a woman who knows the victim and saw him after he was struck by the bullet. "Some comments were made to the effect of 'get out of our country, go back to where you're from,' and our victim was then shot," Kent Police Chief Ken Thomas said at a news conference. "To think that this could happen in our community was very surprising and extremely disappointing," Thomas said. “This is the first incident of this magnitude that I am aware of in the city of Kent" the police chief added.
#breaking Kent Police speaks out on shooting of Sikh man @KIRO7Seattle @PatranyaKIRO7 @LizRocca pic.twitter.com/WRrHY91HF0
— Bill Skok (@billskiro7) March 4, 2017
Sikh community members, who are pushing authorities including the FBI to investigate the shooting as a hate crime, stood behind Thomas as he described the shooting. One man says a lot of people are scared and couldn’t believe something like this could happen here. “All they see is a person with a turban, so it could have easily been me.”
On Sunday morning, the Police were still seeking the gunman who remained at large.
India's foreign minister said on Twitter early Sunday that the victim is identified Deep Rai and he told police he was working in his driveway on Friday when the unidentified man approached him. "I am sorry to know about the attack on Deep Rai, a U.S. national of Indian origin," Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said. He added that he had spoken to the father of the victim.
Rai told police in the Seattle suburb of Kent that the shooter is 6-foot-tall, white and has a stocky build. He said the man was wearing a mask covering the lower half of his face.
Recently, South Asians have been on edge after a deadly shooting in a suburban Kansas City bar that the FBI is investigating as a hate crime. Authorities said witnesses to the shooting, which left an Indian man dead and another wounded, said the suspect yelled "get out of my country" before he opened fire.
Police told KIRO7 that the agency has contacted the FBI and other law enforcement agencies about the case. "We're early on in our investigation," Kent Police Chief Ken Thomas said Saturday. "We are treating this as a very serious incident."
The good news: Rai has been released from the hospital. "He is just very shaken up, both him and his family," said Jasmit Singh, a leader of the Sikh community in the nearby suburb of Renton. "We're all kind of at a loss in terms of what's going on right now, this is just bringing it home."