OAK CREEK, Wisconsin (Reuters) - The gunman who killed six people at a Wisconsin Sikh temple was a US Army veteran, military sources said on Monday, and a monitor of extremists said he had links to hate groups.
A law enforcement source identified the tall, bald, white gunman as Wade Michael Page, 40. The gunman shot dead six people and seriously wounded three, including a police officer, at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin on Sunday as worshippers prepared for religious services. A police officer shot Page dead.
The “name that is out there is accurate,” the source said. Fox News and CNN had previously identified him. Authorities said they were treating the attack as an act of domestic terrorism. American Sikhs said they have often been singled out for harassment, and occasionally violent attack, since the September 11, 2001, attacks because of their colourful turbans and beards.
US military sources said Page had been discharged from the Army in 1998 for “patterns of misconduct” and had been cited for being drunk on duty. Page had served in the military for six years but was never posted overseas. He was a psychological operations specialist and missile repairman who was last stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the sources said. In June 1998 he was disciplined for being drunk on duty and had his rank reduced to specialist from sergeant. He was not eligible to re-enlist.
Page had been a member of the racist skinhead band End Apathy, based in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 2010, said Heidi Beirich, director of the intelligence project at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama.
Page also tried to buy goods from the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group, in 2000, she said. The SPLC describes the National Alliance on its website as “perhaps the most dangerous and best organized neo-Nazi formation in America.”
In a 2010 online interview with End Apathy’s record label Label56, Page said he had founded the band in 2005 because “I realized ... that if we could figure out how to end people’s apathetic ways it would be the start towards moving forward.”
Police were searching an apartment at a duplex in the Cudahy neighbourhood near Milwaukee, presumed to be the residence of the gunman. Generators and floodlights were set up along the street and a bomb squad was on the scene.
The names of the victims were not made public pending notification of relatives, although members said the president of the congregation and a priest were among the victims.
Meanwhile, Indian PM Manmohan Singh voiced shock Monday at the killing of worshippers at a Sikh temple in the US, while Sikh leaders suggested American Muslims may have been the intended target. “I am deeply shocked and saddened to learn of the shooting incident that has resulted in the loss of precious lives,” Singh, himself a Sikh, said in a statement. “That this senseless act of violence should be targeted at a place of religious worship is particularly painful.”
In Sunday’s attack, a gunman shot worshippers at a suburban Sikh temple in Wisconsin, in the mid-western United States, killing at least six people before he was shot dead by police. “I hope the American authorities would investigate who is behind this dastardly attack on innocent devotees and that they will ensure that such ghastly events do not take place,” Singh told reporters later.
According to religious tradition, Sikh Indians wear turbans to cover their uncut hair and sport long beards.
In the United States they have often been mistaken for Muslims and have been targeted by anti-Islam activists, particularly after the September 11, 2001 attacks. “I think it is a case of mistaken identity. Sikhs are often mistaken to be from the Middle East,” said Manpreet Singh Badal, founder-president of People’s Party of Punjab.