Husband of victim arrested in quadruple homicide

                                                                     

The husband of one of the victims has been arrest in connection with the April shooting that killed four members of a Sikh family in Ohio.

Gurpreet Singh, 37, is charged with four counts of aggravated murder in the killing of four members of his family.

Shalinder Kaur, 39; her parents, Hakiakat Singh Panag, 59, and Parmjit Kaur, 62; and her sister Amarjit Kaur, 58, were found dead in an apartment with food burning on the stove.

It was Gurpreet Singh, Shalinder Kaur's husband, who found the bodies and made a frantic 911 call, often leaving his phone to beg for help from his neighbors.

“I have no words. The trauma has been too much. It’s too hard to even think of all that has happened. My brain is not working,” Singh told The Enquirer, breaking down as he communicated in a mix of Punjabi and English.

On Tuesday, West Chester Police Chief announced the arrest. He called the slayings a "heinous crime."

At about 2 p.m., Herzog said, authorities in Branford, Connecticut, arrested Singh without incident. Singh will be held in the New Haven County Jail pending extradition, Herzog added. Police did not reveal why he was in Connecticut

Butler County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser, who also attended the conference, said Singh may face the death penalty, but a grand jury will ultimately make that determination.

"There will be a day of reckoning in respect to this case," Gmoser said.

Singh and his wife have three children: two daughters ages 11 and 9, and a son, 5. The children are staying with other family members, and were not present at the apartment at the time of the killings.

"I didn’t tell them yet. It’s difficult. I don’t know what to say and how to say it,” Singh said shortly after the incident. “They believe that their mother has gone to India.”

Herzog said during the conference that the children are safe.

Singh received an outpouring of support from the Guru Nanak Society of Greater Cincinnati, the local Sikh gurudwara.

The incident drew international attention. One of the victims was an Indian national, and the other three were of Indian origin.

Until the arrest Tuesday, West Chester authorities were tight-lipped about the investigation. Two days after the killings, a dive team with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation recovered a gun from a pond near the scene of the crime.

Within days of the slayings, authorities said no evidence suggested that the killings were hate crimes