Parminder Singh Shergill, 43

Lodi, California
January 25, 2014

Agencies: Lodi Police Department California

Cause of death: Shooting

Follow This Case

---

Last updated: almost 6 years ago

Overview

On an unusually warm Saturday morning in late January, on a street of tended yards and rippling American flags, Jenny Weise was sipping her first cup of coffee in her upstairs bedroom and perusing her Facebook page.

Across the street, Lina Sanchez was in the kitchen, baking cookies for a baby shower.

Residents of Elderica Way in Lodi, about 40 miles south of Sacramento, opened curtains and blinds to the winter sunlight. Dogs trotted on leashes alongside their owners. A group practiced yoga and Pilates in a nearby park.

And the family of a mentally ill Gulf War veteran in the midst of a PTSD episode waited anxiously for police to bring him safely home.

Then, just after 9 a.m., the crack of gunshots echoed through the neighborhood. On Elderica Way, just seven houses from his mother’s home, U.S. Army veteran Parminder Singh Shergill fell to the curb, limp and bleeding, and two uniformed officers hovered over him.

During the next few minutes, Shergill’s neighbors were swept into a drama so startling they could hardly believe it was real. They remember seeing Shergill’s brother Sarabjit, running to the scene, his face blank with shock and confusion. Police yelled to him to stay away, neighbors said, so he walked back home to their mother. “They shot Parm!” Sukhwinder Kaur remembers her son telling her before she collapsed onto a chair in heaving sobs.

It would be hours until the family could confirm that Shergill, a softspoken Sikh who had earned commendations for his military duty more than 20 years before, was dead.

Legal Action

December 2014 Police release findings