KING COUNTY, Wash. — When 60-year-old Kuldip Singh died on the floor of his garage on February 21, Kent police said he had been in a physical struggle with a couple he’d hired to install a new water heater. Blood stained the concrete where paramedics tried to resuscitate him.
Investigators say when the 31-year-old installer and Singh argued over a cash payment, the installer told police he pulled the water heater off the wall to “uninstall” it. He told police Singh was trying to push it back up, and he saw Singh trying to hold the heavy cylinder up, then saw it fall and hit Singh in the abdomen, according to court documents.
Singh’s widow, Pam, who watched the confrontation, said she believed Singh was hit in the face, the water heater fell on him, and he collapsed to the ground, gasping. “I lost my husband. He was everything for my family,” she said.
Police say while Singh was struggling on the floor, the installer’s 27-year-old girlfriend admitted returning to pick Singh’s pockets, stealing his wallet and $360 in cash.
When the couple was arrested later that night, they admitted spending the stolen cash on drugs, according to court documents. At first, Kent police said the couple was being held for investigation of homicide. The King County Medical Examiner declared the cause of his death “cardiac arrhythmia,” but the manner of death is “undetermined,” meaning they can’t determine from the autopsy whether Singh’s death was a homicide or accidental.
“They’re not taking into consideration that he had died from this incident,” said Pinky Brar, Singh’s daughter. “There is no assault or any, like, wrongful death, anything like that ... involved in (the charges), just the theft part.”
Brar showed photos she took of her father’s face at the morgue, which show obvious impact injuries to his face.
“It clearly shows there’s trauma here (in the nose and eye area) and over his eyebrow,” she said.
Brar is trying to convince detectives and prosecutors to view the photos. She believes that her father — a cancer survivor — would not have died naturally that night of a heart attack.
“He was a hard-working man. He went to work every day during his chemo, his radiations, his surgeries, he was out doing yard work, none of those caused his heart to stop,” she said. “That incident is when it happened.”
Brar intends to make a statement when the couple is tried for first-degree theft in May.
“I’m not done fighting,” she said. “I’m going to try my best until the end to get him the justice he deserves.”
Cox Media Group
