WASHINGTON: In the US, information about the suspect has come to light in the case of a Sikh family killed after being kidnapped in California. According to the police, the suspect had worked together in the family's truck business.
According to the report, the suspect in the kidnapping and murders of four Punjabi Family members, including a baby, was arrested late Thursday. Jesus Manuel Salgado was arrested on four counts of murder and four counts of lidnapping.
"This evening, Jesus Manuel Salgado, the suspect in the kidnapping and murder of Aroohi Dheri, Jasleen Kaur, Jasdeep Singh, and Amandeep Singh, was booked into the Merced County Jail. He was arrested for four counts of murder and four counts of kidnapping. Our Detectives, alongside investigators from assisting agencies, will continue to follow up on any leads of additional people who may have been involved in this horrific incident," read Merced County Sheriff's Office Facebook page.
According to the administration and relatives, the suspect was having a dispute with the family for a long time over some issue which got worse and he took this step.
California's Merced County Police said on Wednesday evening that they had found the bodies of four members of a Punjabi family who had been abducted a few days ago.
The family consisted of 27-year-old Jasleen Kaur, 36-year-old Jasdeep Singh, 39-year-old Amandeep Singh and an eight-month-old baby girl.
The family was originally from Hoshiarpur in Punjab, who had a truck business in Merced County.
KNTV channel NBC Bay Area quoted a relative as saying, "The primary suspect in this case is Jesus Manuel Salgado, who worked as a driver for the victim's family's truck company. Later, they parted ways after some quarrel.
Merced County Sheriff Vern Wernecke said another person may also be involved in the case, but is still under investigation.
He said that the suspect had sent angry e-mails or messages to the victim's family a year ago. The family says that nothing has been stolen from the truck company and the deceased were wearing jewellery.
According to the news agency Reuters, the police got information about the kidnapping when they found a burning truck of Amandeep Singh on Monday.
When the police checked the truck, they could not find anything about the family. This led the police to guess that the family had been kidnapped.
Chilling video
A video released by the sheriff’s office showed how the four family members were kidnapped.
The video released by police shows the suspect checking out the property before speaking to one of the men. He is later seen shoving the two brothers into the back seat of Amandeep Singh’s pickup truck with their hands zip-tied behind their backs.
The kidnapper is then seen returning to the trailer, which served as an office, and led the mother who was carrying the child into the truck before driving off.
Family members said nothing was stolen from the trucking company but that their relatives were all wearing jewellery.
Relatives of the kidnapped asked owners of stores or gas stations in the area to check their surveillance cameras for images of the suspect or those missing. “Please help us out, come forward, so my family comes home safe,” Sukhdeep Singh, a brother of the victims, said, his voice breaking.
Back home in Punjab, the other relatives of the family are distraught. While Jaspeep Singh hailed from Harsi Pind village in Hoshiarpur his wife Jasleen was from Jandir in Jalandhar.
The two got married in January 2019 and went to the US in October 2020.