Fresno: A reward of USD 10,000 has been offered to help police nab the culprit in the stabbing to death of a 68-year-old Sikh in California’s Fresno city last week, as possibility of hate crime motive was being probed.
Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer announced the reward at a news conference yesterday in which an enhanced video of the suspected killer of Gurcharan Singh Gill was shown to the media.
Gurcharan Singh Gill, an employee at local store at Shields Express, was at work when he was stabbed to death during broad day light on January 1.
“We need to identify this individual, arrest him and send him to prison,” Mr Dyer was quoted as saying by The Fresno Bee.
The chief was joined at the news conference by Ike Grewal, a member of Fresno’s Sikh community, which is putting up USD 8,000 of the reward. The remainder is from the Crime Stoppers programme.
Police do not know whether the murder was committed because Gurchran Singh Gill was a Sikh, but investigators have not eliminated that as a motive.
The death of Gill, who had lived in the US for 30 years, marked the city’s first homicide of 2016.