Wisconsin Sikh temple shooter said to be white supremacist

By The Associated Press

OAK CREEK, Wis. (AP) — The gunman who killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin before being shot to death by police was identified Monday as a 40-year-old Army veteran and former leader of a white supremacist heavy metal band.

Authorities said Wade Michael Page strode into the temple without saying a word and opened fire using a 9mm handgun and multiple magazines of ammunition.

Page joined the Army in 1992 and was discharged in 1998, according to a defense official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not yet authorized to release the information.

Witnesses said the gunman walked into the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in suburban Milwaukee and opened fire as several dozen people prepared for Sunday services. When the shooting ended, six victims ranging in age from 39 to 84 years old lay dead, as well as Page. Three others were critically wounded.

Page was a “frustrated neo-Nazi” who led a racist white supremacist band, the Southern Poverty Law Center said Monday.

Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the nonprofit civil rights organization in Montgomery, Ala., said Page had been on the white-power music scene for more than a decade, playing in bands known as Definite Hate and End Apathy.

“The name of the band seems to reflect what he went out and actually did,” Potok said.