San Jose: Man convicted of murdering daughter-in-law in Walmart parking lot

SAN JOSE — A Fresno man was convicted of murder this week in the 2022 fatal shooting of his daughter-in-law in the South San Jose parking lot of a Walmart where she worked, out of apparent anger with her plans to divorce his son, according to authorities and court records.

A jury returned a guilty verdict Wednesday against 77-year-old Sital Singh Dosanjh, following a two-week murder trial for the Sept. 30, 2022 killing of Gurpreet Kaur Dosanjh in broad daylight outside the Walmart on Almaden Expressway.

“A guilty verdict can never bring back Gurpreet or erase her family’s pain, but it does bring a measure of justice that can hopefully help her family find closure,” Deputy District Attorney Carolyn Malinsky said Friday. “This conviction acknowledges the truth of her murder and recognizes that Gurpreet’s life mattered.”

According to San Jose police detectives, the victim “was in the process of divorcing (the) suspect’s son” when she was killed.

On the afternoon of the shooting, the victim was on a shift break sitting inside her car and talking on the phone with her uncle. During the conversation, she reportedly voiced her fear of the defendant and said she saw him driving in the same parking lot.

The uncle later told police he heard Gurpreet Kaur Dosanjh say her father-in-law was approaching her car; then, the call disconnected.

About five hours later, a co-worker found the victim lying in her car, gravely wounded by two gunshots to her abdomen and shoulder. She was pronounced dead at the scene. Her uncle traveled to the lot from the Central Valley — the same trip the defendant had made earlier — in order to tell police that Sital Dosanjh was the likely shooter.

The timeline established by police determined that the defendant arrived at the parking lot, shot the victim, and drove away within a 15-minute span.

Police tracked Sital Dosanjh to his Fresno home and arrested him the following morning. They also seized a .22-caliber Beretta pistol.

He faces a minimum 25 years-to-life prison term, and a charging enhancement for his use of a gun in the killing could add another 25 years-to-life term at his sentencing, which is currently scheduled for January.