“This is the story of our American dream gone wrong,” the grieving wife of a Sikh man killed along with three members of his brother’s family, including an 8-month-old baby, said.

Bodies of 36-year-old Jasdeep Singh, 27-year-old Jasleen Kaur, their eight-month-old child Aroohi Dheri and the baby’s uncle, 39-year-old Amandeep Singh were found on Wednesday evening in an orchard after they were kidnapped on Monday.

The family, originally from Harsi Pind in Hoshiarpur, Punjab, were kidnapped from a business in Merced County, California.

Jaspreet Kaur, Amandeep’s widow, said in a Go-Fund-Me fundraiser that her husband and his brother had been in the US for 18 years and supported not only their families in California but also their elderly parents back in India.

“This is the story of our shared American dream gone wrong,” she wrote. “Our loving family was violently taken away from us on October 3rd,” the family’s go fund me page said.

Jaspreet said her husband routinely donated food to the local food bank and never missed Sunday service in the local Sikh temple.

They had a 9-year-old daughter and an 8-year-old son. The family’s page said the two brothers were “the primary bread earners for the family (and) supported their elderly parents”, the appeal said.

Jaspreet had organised this fundraiser. The suspect in the killing of the Sikh family has been arrested. He once worked for the family’s trucking business and had a longstanding dispute with them that got “pretty nasty” and culminated in an act of senseless killing, authorities and a relative said.

Authorities said they were kidnapped from the family’s trucking business in the central California city of Merced, and parts of the kidnapping were captured on surveillance video.

Jesus Manuel Salgado, 48, was formally arrested late on Thursday on four counts of murder and four counts of kidnapping in the case, Merced County sheriff’s spokesperson Alexandra Britton said.

The city of Merced has also organised a candlelight vigil for the family every night at 7 pm from October 6 to October 9.

Woman shot dead

A 74-year-old Indian-American man has been arrested in the US state of California for fatally shooting his daughter-in-law at a parking lot possibly

out of anger over her plans to divorce his son, according to a media report.

Sital Singh Dosanjh killed his daughter-in-law Gurpreet Kaur Dosanjh last week in the South San Jose parking lot of the Walmart where she worked, the East Bay Times reported.

A police investigation that led to the arrest of Sital revealed that the victim was on the phone on Friday telling her uncle about her fear that Sital was looking for her, it said.

She also reportedly told her uncle that she saw Sital driving in the lot, indicating that he travelled 241 km to find her, the report added.

The uncle told police that her niece sounded “frightened” and that Sital was approaching her car, where she was taking a break from work. That was the last thing the uncle said he heard before the phone call disconnected. Five hours later, a Walmart co-worker discovered Gurpreet’s body in the same lot, in the same car, suffering from at least two gunshot wounds.