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The man suspected of kidnapping and murdering a California Sikh family, including their eight-month-old baby, worked for the family’s trucking company and had a long-running feud with them that culminated in an act of “pure evil,” he said. the Merced. County Sheriff.
The bodies of the family, including eight-month-old Aroohi Dheri; her mother Jasleen Kaur, 27; father Jasdeep Singh, 36; and Uncle Amandeep Singh, 39, were found late Wednesday by a farm worker in an almond orchard in the San Joaquin Valley.
Investigators are preparing a case against the convicted felon suspected of the crime and are currently looking for a person of interest who they believe is his accomplice.
The suspect, 48-year-old Jesus Salgado, attempted suicide the day after the kidnappings.
In addition, Salgado’s brother – Alberto Salgado – was arrested Friday for criminal conspiracy, complicity and destruction of evidence in the deadly crime.
Sheriff Verne Warnke of Merced, California said he did not believe Jesus Salgado was working alone.
Warnke added on Friday that Jesus Salgado had a feud with the Singh brothers who was already a year old and was getting “pretty nasty” according to text messages and emails.
The exact nature of the dispute between the parties remains unclear.
Salgado was released from hospital and was admitted to the county jail on Thursday night on suspicion of kidnapping and murder.
Law enforcement officers previously said Salgado became violent every time he regained consciousness.
The sheriff’s office said it was unclear whether he had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
Warnke has called on prosecutors to demand the death penalty against Salgado.
Jasleen Kaur (pictured left), 27, her husband Jasdeep Singh (pictured center) and their eight-month-old daughter Aroohi Dheri (pictured right) have all been found dead
Alberto Salgado, brother of Jesus, was arrested by law enforcement officers for his suspected involvement in the kidnapping and murders
Jesus Salgado, 48, was arrested Tuesday in Merced, California. He reportedly had a long-standing feud with the family he is suspected of having committed the murder
He called it one of the worst crimes he had ever seen in his 43 years on the police force.
“Some things you take with you to the grave. This was pure evil to me.’
“Right now I have hundreds of people in a community mourning the loss of two families, and this is worldwide. These families are on different continents,” Werne told the Associated Press.
“We have to show them that we can give them justice.”
Salgado was previously convicted of first-degree robbery with firearms in Merced County, where the family’s trucking company is located. He was also convicted of attempted false imprisonment and attempting to prevent or dissuade a victim or witness.
He was sentenced to 11 years in state prison for those charges and was released in 2015.
He has also been convicted of possessing a controlled substance, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Surveillance video shows the suspect leading the brothers, whose hands were tied with a zipper, to the back seat of Amandeep Singh’s pickup truck. Salgado then drove the brothers away and returned for Jasleen and her baby, whom he led into the truck and drove off before 9:30 am.
Several hours later, Singh’s truck was found on fire 10 miles away in the town of Winton.
By the time police arrived at Amandeep Singh’s home, where a relative tried to contact him and the couple, they were probably already dead.
“I am fully convinced that there was another person involved. We have no evidence to support that. It’s just the circumstances around this,’ Warnke said.
Before the heartbreaking discovery of the bodies, relatives of the victims asked anyone close to a supermarket or gas station to check their surveillance cameras for images of the suspect or family.
“Please help us, come forward so my family gets home safely,” Sukhdeep Singh, a brother of the victims, said in a broken voice.
The four family members were taken out of business in Merced, a city of 86,000 about 200 miles southeast of San Francisco in the San Joaquin Valley, California’s agricultural heartland.
Family members told KXTV-TV that the office of Unison Trucking Inc., the family-owned company, had only opened about a week earlier.
The Merced County Sheriff has called for the death penalty for Salgado, who is suspected of kidnapping and murdering four people, including an eight-month-old
Salgado attempted suicide before police arrived at his home to arrest him. Law enforcement officers say he gets violent every time he regains consciousness
For bodies: Sukhdep Singh, a relative of the family who was recently kidnapped, spoke to media in Merced before his family’s bodies were found on Wednesday
A map shows key locations in the Merced County, California kidnapping and murder trial
Salgado was previously arrested in December 2005, according to a report by the Merced County Sheriff’s Office.
On the night of December 12, Salgado robbed a family for whom he used to work at gunpoint. He was fired.
The man, who owned a transportation company in the valley, said Salgado had worked for him for two years.
“I was going to close the front door when he pulled out a gun and held it to the back of my head,” the man said. Salgado then taped the man’s hands together, as well as his wife, his 16-year-old daughter and his daughter’s friends. He then proceeded to steal “all the money we had, rings, things like that,” the man said.
The man said Salgado even took the ring off his wife’s finger before letting the family jump into the pool and tell them he would kill them if they called the police.
Despite the threat, the man said his family called the police — and Salgado was arrested the next morning, KSEE24 court records show. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2007. He spent eight years in prison and another three on probation.
He was on active probation at the time of the robbery.
The city of Merced holds vigils in memory of the deceased from Thursday through Sunday.