OAK CREEK, Wis. —Wade Michael Page, the gunman in Sunday’s Sikh temple shooting, had a history of problems with alcohol, which led to him losing his military career and, more recently, a job as a trucker.
In 2000, Page sold everything he owned aside from his motorcycle and journeyed from his native Colorado, eventually settling in rural North Carolina. He joined prominent “white power” rock bands.
Page worked as a driver from 2006 to 2010 for Barr-Nunn Transportation, a trucking company based in Iowa. He was fired in August 2010 after being cited in North Carolina for driving while impaired by alcohol or some other chemical substance.
The company said in a statement that Page was driving his personal vehicle in North Carolina at the time of the citation, and he refused to submit to a blood-alcohol test when pulled over.
After losing his job, Page apparently ran into financial trouble. Public records show that his home, in a rural part of Fayetteville, N.C., was foreclosed on in January. Page had bought the house for $165,000 in 2007, refinanced his mortgage two years later and had fallen far behind in payments.
Investigators are working to determine Page’s motive for the shooting, which in addition to the six dead, left a police officer and two others wounded. Apart from his apparent struggles with alcohol and his personal finances, Page was a musician, who had become deeply embedded in the white-supremacist music scene and was well known to anti-hate watchdog groups. One such group, Southern Poverty Law Center, said it had been tracking him for more than a decade.
A compilation of Page’s online postings by the SITE monitoring service shows many efforts to promote his bands, which had titles like “Definite Hate” and “End Apathy.” But there were also frequent references to the number 88, which is code for “Heil Hitler,” derived from the position of the letter “H” as the eighth letter of the alphabet, and to “the 14 words” — two 14-word-long supremacist mantras. The first mantra is, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children.” The second is, “Because the beauty of the White Aryan women must not perish from the earth.”
There is no evidence that Page harbored specific resentment toward Sikhs. Watchdog groups and Sikhs say it is likely that Page confused the religion with Islam, because Sikh men wear beards and turbans.
Sikhism, a monotheistic religion founded more than 500 years ago in northern India, is the fifth-largest organized religion in the world. Followers, who revere a lineage of 10 gurus, have led a relatively peaceful existence in this country, although they have occasionally been the targets of violence since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Officials said Page served in the Army from 1992 to 1998, and he was stationed at Fort Bliss in Texas and Fort Bragg in North Carolina. He worked as a missile-system repairman and then as a psychological operations specialist before being discharged because of a “pattern of misconduct” that was linked to his being intoxicated while on duty.
In 2000, Page hit the road with his backpack and motorcycle, he said in a 2010 interview with Maryland-based Label 56. His wanderings at one point led him to Georgia to attend “Hammerfest,” an annual white-power music festival that the Anti-Defamation Leaguecalls “a virtual Woodstock of hate rock.”
“He wasn’t friendly. He wasn’t outgoing at all,” Brown said, adding that when he would greet Page, “he’d just shrug and walk off.” Sometimes Brown would see him in the basement lifting weights. “Just him and weights and a lot of moaning.”
Sometimes Brown would see Page carrying an instrument, perhaps a guitar or a keyboard.
“The only time he had a little bounce in his step was when he had a music thing and was heading out. I understand that. Shooting people, I don’t understand,” Brown said.
A woman who answered the phone at a number listed to Page’s grandparents in Littleton, Colo., identified herself as Page’s grandmother. At times breaking into tears, she described how impossible the shootings were to believe.
“He was just a nice person,” she said, then gasped, adding: “I can’t understand him taking six other people’s lives.”
Two weeks ago, she said, her grandson inexplicably sent a bouquet of red roses to her home.
Police on Monday identified Paramjit Kaur, a 41-year-old woman, as one of those killed. The other victims, all men, were identified as Sita Singh, 41; Ranjit Singh, 49; Satwant Singh Kaleka, 62; Prakash Singh, 39; and Suveg Singh Khattra, 84. Singh is a common surname for men in the Sikh religion. The wounded officer was identified as Lt. Brian Murphy, 51, a 21-year veteran of the department. He is in critical condition, Oak Creek Police Chief John Edwards said.
On Monday, members of the Sikh community here in Oak Creek wept after the victims’ names were read during a news conference. One man wiped the tears from the face of another who had sunk to the floor during the event at the police station.
Another asked FBI Special Agent Teresa Carlson how many people like Page are scattered across the country. “That is the problem,” she replied. “Nobody knows.”
The attack jolted Internet message boards trafficked by white supremacists, some of whom urged more, similar actions. SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors radical groups on the Web, reported Monday a flurry of activity on racist message boards, including one thread exhorting the community to “stop talking and start doing.”
The record label that released Page’s music and published the interview called the attack a “tragedy,” saying in a statement that it had worked hard to be “positive.”
“Label 56 is very sorry to hear about the tragedy in Wisconsin and our thoughts are with the families and friends of those who are affected,” it said. “Please do not take what Wade did as honorable or respectable and please do not think we are all like that.”
Leonnig and Somashekhar reported from Washington. Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.
