Gunshot Ended Dreams, Hope, Flight From India

Varinder Singh came to Orange County last year to marry, pursue his education and escape violence in India.

He began work as a clerk in convenience stores, knowing the job’s risks but hoping eventually to find a safer job. His uncle, Pardeep Singh, a former convenience store manager, feared that some day his 22-year-old nephew would face an armed robber. If he did, the uncle advised, Varinder should hand over the cash because “it’s not worth getting killed for $5.”

Late Monday night, a robber entered the 7-Eleven store on Harbor Boulevard and 1st Street, demanding money at gunpoint from Varinder Singh, who stood behind the front counter. Singh did what he was told to do, and then he was killed.

The robber shot Singh once in the chest for no apparent reason, then fled with an undisclosed amount of cash.

Varinder Singh lay unconscious in a hospital’s intensive care unit for nearly three days before dying early Thursday of the gunshot wound to the chest, authorities said.

Family members and friends began coping with the shock of his killing and started organizing Varinder Singh’s burial. Santa Ana homicide investigators sought his killer.

The robber is described as Latino, 20 to 25 years old and about 5 feet, 4 inches tall. He had black, shoulder-length hair and wore jeans, police said. Police studied a recording from a store video camera for leads.

Varinder Singh “was hoping to have a better job, a safer job,” recalled Pardeep Singh, 34. “You never know what is going to happen in those stores.

“This country is not safe,” he said. “There are no jobs. It’s not the America of before. Orange County is not as safe as it was.”

Varinder Singh, with his boyish face, was “like my brother and young son,” cried Pardeep Singh, who had helped pay Varinder’s travel expenses from a small town in the state of Punjab in northern India.

Varinder Singh, a Sikh, wanted to leave Punjab because government forces have arrested and tortured some members of that religion, Pardeep Singh said.

The Punjab region has been the site of frequent violence and sometimes killings by both Sikhs and non-Sikhs during a protracted battle for an independent Sikh homeland, said Roger Rathman of the human rights group Amnesty International.

“What is the difference between India and the U.S.A.?” Pardeep Singh asked. “He came here so he can be away from the danger.”

Varinder Singh’s life in the United States was a simple one, friends and family said. He concentrated on work, stayed home in the evening, and never drank, said Amrit Kaur Sidhu, 33, his aunt.

He worked in the Circle K convenience store in Stanton which Pardeep Singh managed when he first arrived in Orange County. When that store closed, both men had to find other jobs.

Pardeep Singh found work once a week at a food distribution company in Los Angeles, and Varinder Singh found work at the 7-Eleven in Santa Ana.

The shooting, on the second day Varinder Singh held the job, came a week before his wedding day, his family said. They declined to talk about his fiancee, who is in the United States.

Family members said they are trying to bring Varinder Singh’s parents to the United States so they can say goodby to their son and bury him. But first they must tell them he is dead.

“We’re still telling them he’s sick” Pardeep Singh said softly. He said the news would crush them, and he was hoping to spare them the pain for as long as possible.

“I don’t know what I’m going to tell his parents now. That is a very big responsibility.”

“We were thinking of his future,” Sidhu said. “When he gets married we would send him to school to get a better job, a safer job.”

Pardeep Singh and Sidhu sat in the young man’s room in their Cypress apartment, surrounded by memories of Varinder Singh--a closet where his favorite blue and burgundy suits hung, his black dresser with large mirror and a family portrait where he stands with the both of them.

“He’s so beautiful, he’s so beautiful” Sidhu repeated.

“He was really a hard-working kid,” Pardeep Singh said. “But everything is gone now.”