Oak Creek Sikh temple shooting kills six — first major religious hate crime massacre prosecuted under Matthew Shepard Act

On August 5, 2012, Wade Michael Page, a 40-year-old white supremacist and Army veteran from Cudahy, Wisconsin, opened fire at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek, killing six worshippers and wounding four others, including a responding police officer. Page killed himself after being shot by police. The DOJ investigated the attack as a hate crime under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act and publicly classified it as both a hate crime and a domestic terrorist act. Because Page died at the scene, no federal hate crime prosecution could proceed against him personally — exposing a structural limitation of the statute. The attack prompted the FBI to expand its hate crime tracking categories to include Sikh, Hindu, Arab, Buddhist, and other groups not previously tracked separately.