There have been multiple cases of attacks on Sikhs in California, with no arrest being made in many cases.
P Rajendran reports.
Parmjit Singh easily made friends in his neighbourhood in Tracy, California.
But that worked against him on Sunday night when he dallied to chat with some new neighbours before taking a walk in a dark park, where someone fatally stabbed him in the neck.
"It is a pretty safe place. Nothing ever happened like this," Singh's son-in-law Harnek Singh Kang told Rediff.com about the attack that occurred at around 9 pm on in the Gretchen Talley Park.
Kang said that, like Singh, the whole community was friendly.
"He used to go for walks every day. Somebody came [that day] to take him to their house," Kang said, describing the rather Indian ritual in which each person seeks to get the other to come to their house first.
Singh, 64, went over to the home of the new friends he had made, chatted long enough for them to urge him to stay on for dinner.
He demurred, pointing out that his family had food waiting for him at home, but finally agreed to return after a quick walk in the park.
According to Kang, it is not clear how the assault began and progressed.
But immediately after it, Singh ran out of the park and for 200 feet on Dove Drive before collapsing near the Hirsch Elementary School, bleeding out to death.
A passing couple called 9-11.
That was at 8:55 pm.
Though the police arrived within minutes, Kang was already dead at the scene.
It all happened in 15-20 minutes, Kang said. Meanwhile, the family was wondering where Singh had gone.
"Dinner was ready at our house and we were waiting for him," Kang said.
The family thought Singh had gone driving, but car was still in the driveway.
When the call came from the police, they concluded that Singh may have been hit by a passing car in the dark.
"That someone would stab him -- we never thought it was something like that," said Kang, who had told another news outlet that his own father had died years ago and he saw Singh as his father.
"I have not seen his dead body yet. It's still being processed," Kang said, adding that his wife, Mohni, and the rest of the family were in deep shock.
The police are looking for a man seen running away from the area in one video.
Many of the other cameras around the park do not work.
ABC10 asked neighbours about surveillance around the park, but soon learned the cameras were not working on Sunday night.
Police said that after a neighbourhood watch which had put them up disbanded years ago, the police have had no access to them.
A candlelight vigil was held on Wednesday in Parmjit Singh's memory at Gretchen Talley Park.
There have been multiple cases of attacks on Sikhs in California, with no arrest being made in many cases, including the most recent one in Modesto, where the windows at a priest's home were broken and he himself was attacked.
