Days before 8-month-old Aroohi Dheri was killed, she babbled one of her first words. She called out to her father, Jasdeep Singh, 36, and it turned out that was the only time she would ever get to.
“She said ‘daddy’ for the first and only time,” Jasdeep’s cousin Amarinder Singh told NBC News.
Baby Aroohi, her parents Jasdeep and Jasleen Kaur, 27, and her paternal uncle Amandeep Singh were found dead Wednesday in a rural area of Merced, California, not far from where they were abducted two days earlier were.
Jesus Manuel Salgado, a former employee of Jasdeep and Amandeep’s trucking company, was arrested and charged with murder and kidnapping. His brother Alberto Salgado was also arrested and charged with allegedly helping him. NBC News could not identify an attorney for any of the suspects.
The days following news of the deaths have been a calvary for those left behind, Amarinder Singh said. Amandeep left a widow and two small children, Jasdeep left his parents. Jasleen’s parents, who live in India, never got to know their granddaughter. A circle of close cousins in California are also affected by the loss.
“I just felt like someone had pulled the earth out from under me,” Singh said of the moment he learned of the deaths. “I felt numb, I felt empty, I couldn’t think.”
According to Singh, The American Dream took his cousins Jasdeep and Amandeep across an ocean when they were teenagers. The two grew up in a small village in Punjab; Singh well remembers spending months in their home during the summers before the families emigrated in 2004.
The US is a promise of security for all of them, he said.
“We wanted to be in a place where we feel safe, where we think our kids are safe,” he said. “And where we knew that if we work hard, if our kids work hard, they can build their own lives.”
His cousin Amandeep is the living embodiment of that, he said. He spent his early years in the countryside working manual jobs as a cashier and factory worker, eventually buying his first truck.
“He started his business with a single truck he owned,” Singh said. “He drove about five days a week. Some weekends when he wasn’t home. He would be home every seven to ten days.”
It was the business he had worked his whole life to grow that security camera footage showed he was eventually pulled from. The once perfect image of America, which has cracked over the years, has now been shaken, Singh said.
“I follow the news. I’ve heard a lot of things happening. School shootings and mass shootings and whatever else is happening in the US,” he said. “But I never thought something like this would end up so close to our family.”
Singh saw the family a week before she was found dead. He said they talked about their plans for Thanksgiving, a holiday Amandeep always enjoyed spending with his extended family.
“Growing up together as kids in India, he wanted our kids to grow up together so they know each other and have the same bond as we do,” he said.
The last time he saw baby Aroohi, she met Singh’s 3-month-old baby for the first time. The two chattered back and forth while Singh, Jasdeep and Jasleen watched lovingly, he said.
“I think every time I saw them around Aroohi, they both had a sparkle in their eyes,” he said. “They just loved being together as a family. They literally called her “one who has the Spirit of God.”
Singh said he’s still struggling to process why someone could have hurt her.
“It’s totally unjustified,” he said. “I think everyone can at least agree that an 8-month-old has done no harm to anyone and doesn’t deserve it.”
Amandeep’s wife Jaspreet Kaur is a single mother. She has not eaten or spoken, Singh said, and her children, 6 and 8, are struggling to comprehend what happened. The younger one asks if his father is coming home. The older parents of the brothers also remain alone.
“They were all devastated by what happened,” he said.
Singh and some relatives helped the remaining immediate family members set up a GoFundMe that has now raised over $340,000.
But after the chaos, Singh’s family is left with a hole, he said, and he feels their loss all over them.
“I can still hear what I think they would have said, I can still feel how they would have hugged me, I can still think of the things we would do,” he said. “I’m going to miss all of those things.”