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Lawyer: 'Post-9-11 rage led to Sikh's slaying'
09/04/2003
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/index.php?page=local&story_id=090403d3_sikh_shooting
Lawyer: Post-9-11 rage led to Sikh's slaying
The Associated Press
MESA - A man accused of fatally shooting an immigrant from India four days after the 9-11 terrorist attacks acted out of rage fueled by prejudice, a prosecutor said.
The day of the attacks, Frank Silva Roque was overheard promising to shoot people whom he described with an ethnic slur, prosecutor Vince Imbordino said during opening statements Tuesday in Roque's murder trial.
Roque is accused of killing gas station owner Balbir Singh Sodhi, 49, on Sept. 15, 2001.
He is charged with committing drive-by shootings later that day at a home owned by a family from Afghanistan and at a convenience store owned by a Lebanese man. No one was injured in the later shootings.
"This is a clash of two cultures and, in part, a result of Sept. 11," Imbordino said. "But the murder of Mr. Sodhi ran much deeper than that."
Sodhi was neither Muslim nor from the Middle East, as the terrorist hijackers were.
The Mesa gas station owner was targeted because he wore a turban and beard as part of his Sikh faith, authorities said.
"I'm a patriot," police reports quoted Roque as saying shortly after his arrest the day of the shootings.
He added that he was "standing up for his brothers and sisters" in New York, police said.
Roque's lawyers presented a "guilty except insane" defense and said he has suffered from mental illness since he was a teen. Roque's brother is expected to testify that Roque would "argue with people who weren't there," defense lawyer Daniel Patterson said.
Roque's mental illnesses caused him to hear voices and he didn't have a history of racial or ethnic hatred before Sept. 11, 2001, Patterson said.
The attacks served as a catalyst for psychological problems and led Roque to hate people he perceived were from the Middle East, Patterson said.
A court-appointed psychiatrist found Roque was sane during the killing, reports released last week indicated.
If the jury finds Roque was insane, he won't be subject to the death penalty that prosecutors are seeking. But he could be confined to a state hospital until doctors determine he is no longer a threat.
Sodhi was outside his business when Roque drove up and shot him, investigators said.
Landscaper Luis Ledesma testified Tuesday that he was on his hands and knees, showing Sodhi the source of sprinkler problems, when Sodhi was killed.
Ledesma, speaking in Spanish with his testimony translated, said he heard tires squeal and then Sodhi's voice.
"The only words I heard him say was, 'Don't kill me'," Ledesma said.
News of the killing touched off protests in Sodhi's homeland and prompted India's prime minister to call President Bush. About 3,000 people attended a memorial service for Sodhi at Phoenix Civic Plaza the week after he was shot.
The trial is expected to last about a month, with prosecutors calling 40 to 50 witnesses.
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