UNION CITY — The inconsolable cries of Taptej Singh’s 3-year-old son keep the two dozen relatives staying at the family home this week awake at night.
The boy, Jotsaroop, calls out for his father.
“We don’t know how to handle it,” said Singh’s brother, Karman Singh. “We tell him he’s with Babaji.”
He’s with God.
A week after a disgruntled employee killed nine coworkers, including 36-year-old Taptej Singh, in a blaze of gunfire at the Valley Transportation Authority, the families of the fallen are struggling with how to say goodbye. On Wednesday, the Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s office completed the autopsies of the nine victims and reported all died of “multiple gunshot wounds.” Now, authorities have started to release the bodies to the families so funeral arrangements can be made. Relatives are flying in, and coworkers and first responders are filling living rooms to share condolences.
In the midst of it, the families are waiting for answers.
“We’re trying our best to not look at the news, just focus on healing together as a family,” Karman Singh said Wednesday. “But there’s that need to know what happened and to understand why it happened.”
Why did Sam Cassidy, who worked at the VTA for 20 years before pulling out three semi-automatic handguns from his duffle bag last Wednesday, target some workers and let others live? Had there been complaints about Cassidy to VTA management? Where and when did he get the guns he used in the attack and the dozens of high-capacity magazines, which are illegal in California? What made him snap?
A full week into the investigation, neither the VTA, the Santa Clara County sheriff nor the FBI are offering answers. The rail yard and the buildings where the workers were gunned down remain an active crime scene. Yellow police tape still keeps everyone out. The trains are stopped indefinitely.
Because Cassidy turned the gun on himself — shooting himself twice — some answers may never be known.
“With Mr. Cassidy dead, there’s no opportunity for justice,” said Kasey Halcon, director of victims services for the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office, who also helped families affected by the Gilroy Garlic Festival mass shooting less than two years ago. “When we have a criminal case, the facts are laid out for everyone to see. When the person who killed your loved one goes unpunished, is deceased or never identified, you don’t have the opportunity to have those questions answered — and that complicates healing.”
For some families, though, it’s too soon for answers.
“The motive is not important to me,” said Karrey Benbow, who is mourning her “loyal, faithful” son, Jose Hernandez III. For now, what she knows about Cassidy is enough: “He’s a coward.”
At the Singh home in Union City, three generations of the extended family have been gathering every day.
Never are fewer than two dozen loved ones surrounding Singh’s widow, son and 1-year-old daughter. At night, they lay out mats to sleep on the living room floor. The women spend the day cooking lentils and vegetables and baking roti flatbreads for the crowd of more than 100 people from the Sikh community who gather at the family home every evening at 6 p.m. to recite from the holy book. They sit inside and outside — mostly on mats and sheets laid on the ground — in the backyard and front, in the family room and garage. They sing prayers for Singh’s departed soul.
Survivors have told the family that both Singh, a light-rail operator, and Paul Megia, a supervisor, were gunned down while shepherding other workers to safety.
Singh’s family takes solace in knowing that he died helping others. A selfless act like that, performed with humility, is a highly revered tenet in the Sikh religion known as “sewa,” a way of life to which Sikhs aspire.
“In that sense, he was fortunate to sacrifice for others in these moments,” his brother said.
But they can’t help feel the anger and frustration that Cassidy — who was widely viewed by family, co-workers and neighbors as antisocial with anger issues — wasn’t stopped. As much as the family has tried to avoid the news, they are aware of reports that Cassidy was detained in 2016 by U.S. customs officials on a return trip from the Philippines carrying books on terrorism and a notebook full of grievances toward his coworkers.
“We believe this situation never should have happened in the first place,” said Singh’s brother-in-law, Navdeep Singh. “Some kind of follow-up should have been done. At the least they should have taken the guns away from this guy.”
On Thursday, Navdeep Singh, Karman Singh and two other male relatives will perform another sacred function — washing of the body. They won’t know until they get to the Church of the Chimes in Hayward just where the young father was shot or how many times.
But they will gently cleanse him, dress him in fresh clothes and tie a turban around his head. His body will be placed in a big hall and, while prayers are sung, the viewing will begin one by one.
Singh’s brother, Karman, will try to stay focused on his older brother’s life, the family’s healing, and the grieving widow and toddlers left behind. He still doesn’t know how to tell a 3-year-old child that his father will never come home.
Maybe answers about the shooter will help explain, if not to Singh’s little son, then to the rest of the family.
“What went through his mind? Why did he pick people? Why did he let people go? Why did he target both buildings? Why on that particular day?” Karman Singh asked.
“Will the answers bring closure?” he asked. “I don’t know.”