A woman weeps as mourners attend the funeral and memorial service for the six victims of the Sikh temple of Wisconsin mass shooting in Oak Creek, Wis., Friday, Aug 10, 2012. The public service was held in the Oak Creek High School. Three other people were wounded in the shooting last Sunday at the temple. Wade Michael Page, 40, killed five men and one woman, and injured two other men. Authorities say Page then ambushed the first police officer who responded, shooting him nine times and leaving him in critical condition. A second officer then shot Page in the stomach, and Page took his own life with a shot to the head.OAK CREEK, Wis. – They removed the bloodstained carpeting, repaired shattered windows and painted over gunfire-scarred walls. But Sikh Temple of Wisconsin members left a single bullet hole to mark the memory of a white supremacist’s deadly rampage.
As thousands Friday mourned the six victims gunned down before a prayer service, the temple’s members worked late the previous night to remove all but the one trace of the shooting. The waist-high bullet hole in a door jamb near the main prayer room was left as a memorial to the six slain worshippers.
“We will put a plaque here,” Harpreet Singh, the nephew of one of the victims, said Friday. “We will make sure they are never forgotten.”
Members showed The Associated Press the dime-size hole during an exclusive tour of the temple. While most other physical reminders of the horror have been scrubbed or painted away, temple members said they could still feel the spirits of those who died.
As Singh showed the AP the bedrooms where his uncle and a priest were killed, he frequently paused with his hands on his hips and looked around in silence.