Arizona man charged with murder of Sikh

Associated Press

PHOENIX — A man was charged Monday with murdering a turbaned Indian immigrant in a weekend rampage prosecutors said was motivated by ethnic hatred.

Frank Silva Roque, 42, was jailed on $1 million bail on charges that also included attempted murder. Prosecutor Rick Romley said Roque targeted minorities during a rampage Saturday in which Balbir Singh Sodhi died.

"Mr. Sodhi was killed for no other apparent reason than that he was dark-skinned and wore a turban," Romley said. "He was killed because of hate."

Romley did not address whether the shootings were in retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. But police said Roque shouted that he was a patriot as he was arrested.

"I’m an American. Arrest me. Let those terrorists run wild," Roque was quoted as saying in a report read to The Associated Press on Monday by Mesa Detective Tim Gaffney.

Roque, an aircraft mechanic at Boeing in Mesa, has declined all media interviews. A woman who answered the phone at his home Monday said she didn’t know what happened Saturday, and declined to give her name.

Roque had once lived at the house where the shooting occurred, according to police reports.

Sodhi, a 49-year-old Sikh, was killed in a drive-by shooting outside the gas station he operated in Mesa.

The killer then drove 10 miles to a second gas station and fired several shots through a window at a Lebanese-American clerk and then fired shots into the home of a family of Afghani descent, police said.

Around the country, several apparent backlash attacks and threats have been reported against people of Middle Eastern and southern Asian descent.

Among them: an attack on a Moroccan gas station attendant in Palos Heights, Ill.; an attempt to run over a Pakistani woman in a parking lot in Huntington, N.Y.; and the arrest of an armed man who allegedly dumped gasoline into the parking lot of a Seattle mosque.