Police found Hakiakat Singh Pannag, 59, and his wife, Parmjit Kaur, 62, in their apartment at 4562 Wyndtree Drive with their daughter, Shalinderjit Kaur, 39 and Parmjit Kaur’s sister, Amarjit Kaur, 58, Sunday evening with gunshot wounds in the Wyndtree Drive apartment.
West Chester Police Chief Joel Herzog said the four homicides are not hate crimes and they said they were not random shootings.
Police were still searching Wednesday for the shooter, and investigators spent two days searching the pond next to the apartment building.
Herzog said in a news release that four victims and their families “are on our minds every step of the way in this investigation. This case will continue to be our top priority until those who committed this crime are held accountable.”
CONTINUING COVERAGE:
Religious leader: Man killed in West Chester quadruple homicide ‘was a great guy’
West Chester homicides: What happened in the first 24 hours
Police: West Chester homicides not random, investigators have ‘followed countless leads’
Even though police assured the residents’ safety, some in the apartment complex are worried and uneasy.
Satnam Singh said the four victims were “always a happy family” and frequented his grocery store, India Bazar off Union Centre Boulevard. He, his wife, Subdiner Kaur, and their young daughter live in the building adjacent to the site of the shooting.
“We’re very worried,” said Singh on Wednesday afternoon in his grocery store.
Subdiner Kaur said she “heard noises” when she left Sunday evening to help her husband at the grocery store, but they didn’t sound unusual.
“Everybody is talking about this,” she said of customers coming into the store. “It’s really a shock.”
Police were dispatched to 4562 Wyndtree Drive in the Lakefront apartment complex at around 9:40 p.m. Sunday for a report of four people down. It’s not clear from West Chester’s Sunday night radio calls which two members of the family were in the living room, and where the other two were found.
Singh and Kaur said they knew the family fairly well. Subdiner Kaur said Shalinderjit Kaur would shop at the grocery store while her children were at dance class next door. Singh said Parmjit Kaur was planning to leave on a trip to India.
“They’re so kind. They’re so good,” Subdiner Kaur said of the family.
On Monday, the president of the executive committee at the temple the family attended said Hakiakat Pannag was “a great guy.”
“He was a great friend, he was a great dad, he was a great grandfather and he was a great husband.” said Jasminder Singh, Guru Nanak Society Sikh Gurudwara Sahib of Greater Cincinnati executive committee president.
Credit: DaytonDailyNews
One of the four killed was an Indian national on a visit to the United States, said Sushma Swaraj, the minister of External affairs for the India government, in a tweet.
“Our Consul General in New York is coordinating with the concerned authorities and will keep me informed me on this,” she said.
Police on Monday released the 911 call made by a frantic man, who lives at the Lakefront apartment where his relatives were found. Police said he ran door to door asking for help while 911 dispatchers were on the phone.
“My wife and my family are on the ground bleeding,” the panicked man told the dispatcher, eventually saying they were bleeding from the head.
While police and the Butler County Coroner reported all four were killed by a gunshot wounds, officials are not specifying how many shots were fired or where the victims were hit.
“We’re not going get into specifics at this time,” said coroner spokesperson Martin Schneider said.
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