Remembering the victims:
Satwant Singh Kaleka, 65, the temple president, killed after physically confronting the gunman. Paramjit Kaur, 41. Prakash Singh, 39. Ranjit Singh, 49. Sita Singh, 41. Suveg Singh, 84.
Wounded: Lt. Brian Murphy, 51, a member of the police department since he was 30.
If you would like to make a donation in honor of the victims:
Online: http://wearesikhs.com/
Postal address:
Victims Memorial Fund
Sikh Temple of Wisconsin
7512 South Howell Ave
Milwaukee, WI 53154
First, I'll give fair warning. It's the time in the news cycle for a lot of attention on who the shooter was, what he was involved in, all those things. I think it's important to see these things because, while we don't want to give undue attention to the shooter, we should try to understand what kind of people and groups are out there and what they are doing.
To start, though, an out of state client of mine from another area told me she saw a very touching story in her local paper, the Washington Post, about these events. So I went searching for it. I'm not sure this first link is what she was referencing but it's a pretty good story of two young heroes.
At Sikh temple shooting, 2 children helped save many lives
Amanat Singh was dancing in front of the Sikh temple here on Sunday morning, cracking up her 11-year-old brother, Abhay.
Amanat had just turned 9, and her family was responsible for preparing a birthday lunch for 300 people. The children’s parents had told the pair to stay inside the temple while they went to a store to get more paper plates.
But the temple was hot, with samosas frying and chapatis on the grill. So the children stepped outside to catch the breeze. That was when they saw the man get out of the car.
As Amanat and Abhay turned back to their play, they heard a pop. Then another. What they thought, fleetingly, might have been fireworks were actually gunshots.
One second, kids being kids. The next, kids being heroes and living through the kind of terror most of us couldn't even imagine.
One more before we get to the shooter and his life, a profile of Brian Murphy, the officer who was shot.
Cop wounded in temple shooting a skilled veteran
Unable to speak, Oak Creek Police Lt. Brian Murphy held up his hand for Chief John Edwards to hold.
He mouthed one word: "Sorry."
Edwards visited Murphy Monday night at Froedtert Hospital - a day after the 21-year Oak Creek police veteran was shot numerous times while responding to the massacre at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek.
"He was stable. He was alert. He acknowledged me. He smiled, brought up his hand, (he) wanted me to grab his hand. Kind of mouthed to me he was sorry," said an emotional Edwards.
Now, on to the shooter's life (his girlfriend, "white power" music, white supremacist groups)...
Gunman's ex-girlfriend tied to white-power group
South Milwaukee Police removed a gun from the home Sikh temple shooter Wade Michael Page had shared with his former girlfriend, Misty M. Cook, 31, who cannot legally own a gun because she has a previous felony conviction, according to officials and court records.
The woman also has associated with a group, Volksfront, which anti-hate groups consider a racist Neo-Nazi organization, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
Page and Cook broke up in June, according to neighbors in a duplex on the 1400 block of Marquette Ave., where Cook still lives.
Neither the authorities nor ADL allege Cook knew of or was involved in the temple shooting.
Sikh shooting draws attention to white power music
With a shaved head and tattoos, Page played guitar and sang for a number of white power bands with names like End Apathy and Definite Hate, espousing views on albums such as "Violent Victory" and encouraging others to act through his Internet postings.
"Violence is part of this culture," said Robert Futrell, professor of sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and co-author of "American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement's Hidden Spaces of Hate."
Called "hate music" by detractors and "independent music" by advocates, it provides an outlet for white supremacists, some of whom openly preach violence against minorities while others offer more subtle messages of angst and alienation found in many forms of music.
Finally, a story of a former white supremacist in Milwaukee:
Former white supremacist haunted by a world he once knew
News of the temple shooting in Oak Creek haunted the man once known as Arno the Barbarian, the tall, former white supremacist who helped found a hate group in Milwaukee in 1987, who sang - or rather shouted - racist lyrics for the band Centurion, who stomped across a stage egging on an audience of skinheads as they gave him straight-armed Nazi salutes.
Arno Michaelis, now 41 and working on the other side for a group called Life After Hate, knew the white power world of steel-toed boots and swastika jackets that had nurtured and fed the Oak Creek shooter Wade Michael Page.
Also, about the music:
"There is a whole underworld of these white supremacist bands that is virtually unknown to the general public. But it's probably the single most important source of financing for the movement and probably the best source of recruiting," said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center. "The music is incredibly important in terms of bringing young people into the movement."
8:30 AM PT: The FBI reported this morning the shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head after being shot in the stomach by the police officer.