Days after US’s ‘Mr Singh’ racist post, Sikh trucker stabbed 17 times - The Indian Express

A 28-year-old Sikh truck driver from Sacramento, California, was stabbed 17 times inside a restroom on a major highway early Sunday, in an attack he described as completely unprovoked.

Community advocates noted that Singh was attacked just days after a controversial September 9 US Department of Homeland Security social-media post featuring an AI-generated image of a brown-skinned, bearded man with a head covering labelled “Mr Singh”. The post has since been removed but a video on the same theme remains on X (formerly Twitter) handle of US department of Homeland security

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The poster carried messages “Get off our roads, you don’t know how to drive, Mr. Singh” and “Self-deport or find out,” alongside a Transformers-style Optimus Prime figure bearing a DHS insignia. DHS later said the image referred specifically to Harjinder Singh, an Indian national charged in a fatal August 2025 Florida Turnpike crash that killed three people.

The post was deleted after widespread criticism from Sikh organisations, Indian-American groups, and Democratic lawmakers who called it racist and dehumanising.

A man from San Gabriel, California, was taken into custody in connection with the crime and charged with attempted first-degree murder.

The victim, who asked to be identified only by his surname, Singh, out of fear for his safety, was travelling toward Pennsylvania when he stopped at the eastbound Bitter Creek Rest Area on Interstate 80 around 3 am.

He told National Public Radio (NPR) and The Sacramento Bee that he had used the same rest stop many times before without incident.

According to Singh’s account and charging documents, he entered the bathroom and was looking in the mirror when a man came up behind him. The attacker punched him in the head and neck, pushed him against the wall, and then pulled out a knife, described by Singh as blue, and stabbed him repeatedly in the arms, chest, rib cage, and neck.

Singh said he fought back, pushed the man away, and saw “the naked bone” on one of his arms as blood poured from deep wounds. He managed to exit the restroom, call 911, and collapsed outside on the pavement.

“I thought that now my final time had come,” Singh told The Sacramento Bee.

“I don’t know why this happened. I don’t know why they attack[ed] me,’ he later told NPR from his hospital room.

Singh was airlifted to Wyoming Medical Center in Casper, where he remained hospitalised days later with multiple lacerations and injuries to his chest and ribs. Investigators documented 17 lacerations, including two stab wounds to the neck and two to the chest.

He said he was stressed about medical bills and lost work time. “I am scared and also upset because I have [to] work regularly.”

He also expressed worry for other Sikh drivers: “I am just worried … it can happen again.”

A Hispanic family at the rest area played a critical role in saving his life and catching the suspect. One woman in the women’s restroom heard “grunting and screaming” from the men’s side.

The family saw a man, later identified as the suspect, run out, get into a red semi-truck with a trailer marked “JKC,” and drive east. They followed long enough to photograph identifying information on the truck and trailer and provided it to the police. Singh credited them with giving him “the second life.”

Dash-cam footage from a nearby parked truck showed Singh walking casually into the restroom, followed moments later by a man in a black sweater and blue jeans. Less than a minute later, the same man ran out and returned to his truck. Blood was found inside the restroom, in the lobby, outside the building, and near a parked semi.

Wyoming Highway Patrol located the suspect’s truck near Rawlins (roughly 70 miles east) around 5 am and stopped it at Exit 209 near a Flying J without incident.

They took Andrew Kris Bzdak, 44 or 45, of San Gabriel, California, into custody.

Prosecutors allege he acted with premeditated malice and intended to kill the victim. The charge carries a possible life sentence under Wyoming law.

The attack has heightened safety concerns among South Asian and especially Sikh truck drivers, who make up a significant portion of the industry — about 35 per cent of California’s commercial drivers, according to the North America Punjabi Trucking Association.

DHS rejected any link to the Wyoming stabbing, calling attempts to blame the agency “RECKLESS and FALSE.”

“The Sheriff’s Office has said there is no known motive at this time, but we cannot separate this incident from the climate in which it happened. When our own federal government uses a Sikh name and image to tell people like us that they do not belong on America’s roads, our community has every reason to be concerned about the environment that kind of rhetoric creates,” Jasjit Singh, also known as Jasjit Singh Dhanoa, attorney and director of legal services for the California-based Jakara Movement, told NPR.

Jakara Movement is supporting the victim.

US Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi condemned the stabbing and linked it to “rising hatred targeting Sikh and South Asian Americans”.