In Fresno — the heart of California's agricultural community — police are looking for whoever attacked two elderly Sikh-American men. The incidents happened a week apart over the holidays. One man was fatally stabbed, another badly beaten.
The attacks come amid reports of increased bullying and violence directed at Sikh-Americans around the country, apparently because they are mistaken for Muslims.
The unprovoked and apparently unrelated attacks are a hot topic on KBIF-AM in Fresno, where Gurdeep Shergill and his wife, Sonia, co-host a program on Saturday mornings for the 35,000 Sikh-Americans who live in Fresno.
"This morning I was talking about the hate crime, I was giving them the definition, what is hate crime, why they happen," Gurdeep Shergill says.
The subject of hate crimes is ripe in the community. The day after Christmas, a 68-year-old farmworker, Amrik Singh Bal, was attacked and beaten by two white men as he waited to be picked up for work. Bal was wearing a turban at the time.
Then on New Year's Day, another 68-year-old man, Gurcharan Singh Gill, was fatally stabbed in the liquor store where he worked. In that attack, Gill was not wearing a turban indicating he was Sikh, said Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer.