Fiona Aboud Photographs

Harjinder Kaur, Balbir Singh Sodhi's widow Mesa, AZ 2009.

On September 15, 2001, Balbir Singh Sodhi was gunned down in Mesa, Arizona. He was the nation’s first post-9/11 victim of a hate murder; Sodhi’s killer mistook him for a Muslim Arab, though the gas-station owner had actually immigrated from India to the US in 1989 and was Sikh.

javascripts: Harjinder Kaur, Balbir Singh Sodhi's widow Mesa, AZ 2009. On September 15, 2001, Balbir Singh Sodhi was gunned down in Mesa, Arizona. He was the nation’s first post-9/11 victim of a hate murder; Sodhi’s killer mistook him for a Muslim Arab, though the gas-station owner had actually immigrated from India to the US in 1989 and was Sikh.